The Riverside Shakespeare Company of New York City

10/02/2021

Two gents!

03/30/2019

THEATRE INSPIRES!
40 years ago this April. Riverside Shakespeare Company takes The Mandrake to the parks - the Shakespeare Garden in the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. This cut-down version of the show featured Ronald Lew Harris, Susan Kay Logan (both in the sepia poster), Joe Meek, Michael Goldner, and Daniel O Smith (also the director). I was out somewhere else in the park at a dedication ceremony with Estelle Parsons and Joe Papp. Yes, that's me behind the beard, '70's hairstyle, and shaded glasses.

01/14/2019

In 1979 the Riverside Shakespeare Company mounted Niccolo Machiavelli's Renaissance farce, The Mandrake, in the large second floor auditorium of the Casa Italiana of Columbia University located at West 117th and Amsterdam Avenue.

04/25/2018

Coming up on the 40th anniversary of the New York City parks tour of a Midsummer Night’s Dream by the Riverside Shakespeare Company New York City... such fond memories of that summer of 1978. Here is Eric Hoffmann as Puck. The next summer he played sir John Falstaff, the only time I know of a Shakespeare Company having such a transformational actor. In one year.

01/29/2018

This month, four decades ago, somewhere on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, a troupe of peregrinating actors and musicians were preparing a black-turtleneck-stools-are-the-set-production of 12th Night to be staged in a 3rd floor space rented from the Manhattan Theatre Club on the Upper East Side in late February after a subway tour of libraries and gyms in the fall. This slick, ingeniously staged show directed by Gloria Skurski would lift the company to a new level of excellence and a reputation for professional consistency.

12/18/2016

10/01/2016

http://www.mostmetro.com/the-featured-articles/restoration-review-wright-state-university-new-stage-new-age.html

Everything old is somewhat new again as Wright State University opens its 42nd season with a terrifically acted and designed quasi-world premiere of “Restorat

09/24/2016

Memories!

11/10/2015

I just learned of the passing of a dear dear friend, Kathy Storfer, who blessed us all with her wit, her brilliance, her lovely voice and marvelous family! Gloria Skurski and I cherished our friendship with her, through the early halcyon days of The Riverside Shakespeare Company of New York City,which she helped to grow; with her fabulous husband Paul, my business partner at McDowell/Scripps (Kathy introduced Sam Scripps to me and to Riverside as well); and on many many happy occasions at their home, and in Manhattan. She was a hoot, my friends! And her laughter and joy of life will, in many many ways, live on in us!

09/02/2015

Columbia University, Freshman Orientation, first summer tour of Riverside Shakespeare's inaugural tour of ROMEO & JULIET!! SEPTEMBER 2. 1977. Seemed like there was a zillion people there, sitting on the steps of Low Library.... We performed the uncut, torchlit Hamlet there the following spring...

06/12/2015

Helen Hayes was one of the first of our Board of Advisors, eventually doing several benefits for the company, including the dedication of the Shakespeare Center in 1981, and eventually performing two special benefits of Dickens' A Christmas Carol - the first with Carole Shelly, Raul Julia, MacIntyre Dixon, Len Cariou, Bille Brown, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Hal Scott.

06/12/2015

Our second show, back in the fall of 1977... Twelfth Night, directed by Gloria Skurski, which began as a subway tour - carrying stools between libraries and church rec rooms, and odd small theatres until we landed at the Manhattan Theatre Club for a glorious sold-out run. The Heights Innwood news discovered us, with the quote, "Some theatre companies – those which start out with talented and intelligent actors – are born great. Some companies – those which start out with diffident, inexperienced people who soon mature with their art – achieve greatness. And some companies – those which start out untrained and unguided – can, with the advent of a brilliant force, have greatness thrust upon them. In the first hyperbolic category is one of the city's newest theater groups, the Riverside Shakespeare Company.... Now the group is well on its way to becoming an important theatrical force in Upper Manhattan and elsewhere..." The show was simple, done all in black, but with a fabulous original score for cello, and was a knock-out.