Knight of the Burning Pestle

From the Playbill:

When I first saw a performance of The Knight of the Burning Pestle back in university, I thought it was a complete hoot, undoubtedly freely adapted by some of my peers in the spirit of the 1960’s. A 2003 production by Shenandoah Shakespeare at the glorious Blackfriars Theatre in Staunton, Virginia reminded me of this rarely produced gem which, again, seemed highly contemporized. Upon finding the script in a dusty tome of “Elizabethan and Jacobean Plays,” I was amazed to discover that both productions I had seen were surprisingly true to both the spirit and the words of the text.

Our production is true to the spirit of 17th Century theatre in its use of contemporary popular songs and locally referential in-jokes. The bulk of what you will hear tonight was, however, actually written during Shakespeare’s lifetime. As you can see, it’s not dead yet.