Skip to main content

Janice Blixt named MSF artistic director


New MSF Artistic Director Janice Blixt
Press release from the Michigan Shakespeare Festival, November 11, 2009:
After months of searching and interviews, The Michigan Shakespeare Festival is proud to announce the selection of their new Artistic Director: Janice L. Blixt.
Janice is currently the Producing Artistic Director of A CREW OF PATCHES THEATRE COMPANY, a Chicago repertory company specializing in Shakespeare. For the Patches she has directed such classics as: JULIUS CAESAR, MACBETH, TWELFTH NIGHT, and ROMEO & JULIET. For other Chicago theatres she has directed ROMEO & JULIET, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, THE COMEDY OF ERRORS, THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, and HENRY V. She has also been the vocal director and text coach for OTHELLO, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, THE TAMING OF THE SHREW, and HAMLET.
Janice has also made a name for herself in the world of workshops and classes, teaching classical text work, voice, and Folio Technique for professional actors, Eastern Michigan University, Loyola University, The City Colleges of Chicago, and for high schools around Chicago and its suburbs.
Janice received her MFA in Acting from Detroit’s Hilberry Repertory Theatre at Wayne State and BA’s in Theatre Arts and Literature from Bradley University.
While in the Detroit area, she performed for Meadow Brook, the Jewish Ensemble Theatre, Heartlande, and the Shadow Theatre Company. Since moving to Chicago, she has worked with City Lit Theatre, Bowen Park, The Next, and Timeline.
Her great joy is, and has always been, Shakespeare. Past roles include Lady Macbeth; Viola, Olivia, and Maria in TWELFTH NIGHT; Portia and Metella in JULIUS CAESAR, Lady Capulet and the Nurse in ROMEO & JULIET; Isabella in MEASURE FOR MEASURE; Rosalind in AS YOU LIKE IT; Beatrice in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING; Dionyza in PERICLES, Isabella in EDWARD III.
Janice is delighted to return to the Michigan Shakespeare Festival, where she performed Kate in THE TAMING OF THE SHREW, Titania in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, and Queen Elizabeth in RICHARD III. She is married to longtime MSF actor, director, and fight choreographer David Blixt, with whom she shares two wonderful children, Dashiell and Evelyn.
Janice is both honored and immensely excited at this opportunity, just as the Michigan Shakespeare Festival is delighted and honored to have her. Please join us this summer for her inaugural season of ROMEO & JULIET and A COMEDY OF ERRORS!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

What's a popp'rin' pear?

James Wheaton reported yesterday in the Jackson Citizen Patriot that the Michigan Shakespeare Festival high school tour of Romeo and Juliet was criticized for inappropriate content -- " So me take issue with sexual innuendoes in Michigan Shakespeare Festival’s High School Tour performances of ‘Romeo & Juliet’" : Western [High School] parent Rosie Crowley said she was upset when she heard students laughing about sexual content in the play afterwards. Her son didn’t attend the performance Tuesday because of another commitment, she said.  “I think the theater company should have left out any references that were rated R,” Crowley said. “I would say that I’ve read Shakespeare, and what I was told from the students, I’ve never read anything that bad.”  She said she objected to scenes that involved pelvic thrusting and breast touching and to a line in which Mercutio makes suggestive comments to Romeo after looking up the skirt of a female. The problem with cutting out...

Winkler lights the match

by Linda Theil When asked by an interviewer why all the experts disagree with her on the legitimacy of the Shakespeare authorship question, journalist and author Elizabeth Winkler  calmly replied, "You've asked the wrong experts." * With that simple declaration Winkler exploded the topic of Shakespearean authorship forever. Anti-Stratfordians need no smoking gun, no convincing narrative, no reason who, how, when, or why because within the works lies the unassailable argument: Shakespeare's knowledge. Ask the lawyers. Ask the psychologists. Ask the librarians. Ask the historians. Ask the dramaturges. Ask the mathematicians. Ask the Greek scholars. Ask the physicists. Ask the astronomers. Ask the courtiers. Ask the bibliophiles. Ask the Italians. Ask the French. Ask the Russians. Ask the English. Ask everyone. Current academic agreement on a bevy of Shakespearean collaborators springs from an unspoken awareness of how much assistance the Stratfordian presumptive would h...

Dudley nails it to the door

Michael Dudley author of The Shakespeare Authorship Question and Philosphy: Knowledge, Rhetoric, Identity (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2023) Michael Dudley views his vocation of librarian at the University of Manitoba with dialectic rigor. "Librarianship has a duty to inform democracy," he said in Kathryn Sharpe's virtual bookclub on April 27, 2024. Dudley discussed his new book The Shakespeare Authorship Question and Philosophy: Knowledge, Rhetoric, Identity published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing last fall. Update 08/21/24 Dudley's book is also available as an ebook from   Google Play . In SAQ and Philosophy Dudley uses the hammer of logic to nail his accusations against the barricaded door of the Shakespeare citadel. "The question of Shakespeare's authorship is a malformed debate practiced in an unethical fashion," Dudley said. When asked why his book is important, Dudley said: "What sets my book apart from others on the authorship quest...