Recently, Beale Street Theater held auditions for its spring show, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: Abridged and the talents that came out were all phenomenal! On Monday, January 13th, the co-directors held call-backs and officially chose the cast on Wednesday night. Today, we are excited to announce the actors and learn a little bit about them.

This show is different, in that the cast will actually be playing themselves, in lieu of the original cast of Daniel Singer, Adam Long, and Jess Winfield. Let’s get started!

First, taking the shoes of Adam Long, Lucas Youngerberg will be representing many of Shakespeare’s women, bad wig and all! Lucas is new to the Beale Street Theater group, as he is originally from Minnesota. While presumably enjoying this lovely Arizona weather, Lucas also says that “Just getting to work with a totally new group of people is always very exciting.” Lucas has a history in acting with numerous theater groups in the past and has actually played the silent audience “Bob” in a different Shakespeare Abridged production last March. We’re excited to have a new face on the stage here at Beale Street Theater, and hopes he breaks his legs!

Christal Hartley will be stepping in for Jess Winfield this time around, and we are excited to have her on stage. Christal has an extensive background on and off stage, both with Beale Street Theater and out of it. She was the stage manager of BST’s spring musical Bye Bye Birdie and more recently directed The Legend of the Lone Texas Walker Ranger. She is most excited to finally act in this production, as she admitted she hasn’t been on stage in a whopping 3 years! This spit-fire girl has the energy for this show, and we’re excited to see her zip around in all the chaos.

Last but certainly not least of this small troupe of actors is Matt Lambert! Matt will be taking Daniel Singer’s place and has fully admitted that he has not ever read a Shakespeare play all the way through. Though this is his 7th show with Beale Street Theater, Matt has done 24 productions since starting his theatre career. If you’ve seen Death of a Salesman, you’ve seen his powerhouse acting as Biff and that confidence will more than surely translate to this show. When asked what he was most excited about in this production, he wouldn’t stop talking.

“I really hope that this is something that we can get a lot of people to come out to and enjoy because this is a really funny play. Everybody is obviously familiar with Shakespeare, like even myself I’ve read a bunch of Shakespeare but I’ve never really read an entire play before.”

“So you have all those popular bits that everyone knows, and they get pulled out and you get to make this mess of all his work and it’s fun.”

We hope you’re just as excited as we are to see these talented actors hit the stage at Metcalf Park on March 14th and 21st! More information will be coming your way in the next few days, so look out for any updates! For now, we bid you adieu.