Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor will open the season Sept. 29–Oct. 7.

It has been said that Queen Elizabeth so liked the character of Falstaff in Shakespeare’s Henry IV that she demanded an encore. Falstaff returns a big man with bigger appetites and a very small purse, who is not nearly as clever as he thinks he is. Mistress Page and Mistress Ford lead Falstaff on a merry chase, with love hanging in the balance.

The performance is to be a gala production in celebration of USC’s bicentennial, with invited guest performers and added performances. Jim O’Connor, chair of the Department of Theatre, Speech, and Dance, is the director.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard is set for Nov. 11–18. Stoppard turns Hamlet upside-down and out of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy comes a modern, existential comedy. He retells Hamlet's story from the point of view of two bumbling, bewildered bit players.

Theatre South Carolina presented Stoppard’s Arcadia two seasons ago. Stoppard won an Oscar for his screenplay for the movie, Shakespeare in Love. His latest play, The Invention of Love, is now on Broadway, but the playwright had his first great success with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

Karl Rutherford will direct.

Bee-Luther-Hatchee by Thomas Gibbons will receive its South Carolina premiere Feb. 8–17. The play is a very contemporary take on eternal questions: What is truth? What is genuine anymore? And who should profit from the truth if it can be found?

Shelita Burns is a successful editor of neglected and obscure African-American fiction. When her first nonfiction offering wins a prestigious award, surprising discoveries lead to dramatic encounters that trace the paper-thin boundary between truth and fiction.

David Wiles, an assistant professor of theatre, speech, and dance, is the director.

Sophocles’ eternal tragedy, Antigone, will be performed March 1–9. She is immovable, exemplary, rigid, fanatical, vulnerable, hysterical, extreme, brilliant, courageous, and, ultimately, soul-lit. She is Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, in the play Sophocles named for her in 441 B.C. Antigone insists on burying her brother slain in bloody civil war, and Creon, her uncle and the new king, forbids burial of the nephew he has decreed a traitor.

Antigone is a distillation of the conflict between private conscience and public duty, a tragedy of the demands of family bonds and an everlasting work of art.

The director will be announced.

Hay Fever by Noel Coward will run April 19–28. A wacky weekend in the country and sneezing is the least of the play’s bright comedy.

Four guests arrive at a summer home. Each hopes for a romantic weekend. Nothing turns out the way it was planned. They--and the audience--meet the Bliss family: a retired actress, her novelist husband, and two strange children. Revel in wit and innuendo, flirtation and surprise, in one of Noel Coward's most popular plays.

Guest Artist Paul Mullins, of the New Jersey Shakespeare company and off-Broadway, will direct.

Ticket prices for faculty, staff, military, and senior citizens are $10 for the first weekend and $8 thereafter. A season subscription is $40.

Ticket prices for students are $9 for the first weekend and $6 thereafter. A season subscription is $30.

Ticket prices for the general public are $12 for the first weekend and $10 thereafter. A season subscription is $50.

Box office hours are noon–6:30 p.m. Monday–Friday in Longstreet Theater, beginning the Monday before the first performance. The box office reopens in the performing theater one hour before each performance. For information, call 7-2551.