Great Lakes Theater is kicking off its 65th anniversary season with a Shakespeare play that blends comedy, tragedy, and a translation designed to make 400-year-old language land with modern ears. The Cleveland-based company opens The Winter's Tale on September 25, running through October 11 at Playhouse Square's Hanna Theatre, with Nick Steen starring as the tormented King Leontes.
The production carries more significance than a typical season opener. According to the Morning Journal, this staging marks the first production of a newly formalized five-year partnership between Great Lakes Theater and Play On Shakespeare, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting contemporary interpretations of Shakespeare's work. The adaptation was written by Tracy Young, who aims to make the playwright's dense verse more accessible to today's audiences without stripping away its poetic backbone.
That mission traces back further than this single show. Play On Shakespeare began in 2015 as a three-year commissioning initiative at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival before becoming an independent nonprofit in 2019, ultimately commissioning 36 playwrights — a majority women and artists of color — to translate all 39 Shakespeare plays into modern verse, according to Fractured Atlas. The organization is backed by the Palo Alto-based Hitz Foundation, founded by Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Hitz, which also awarded a $10 million grant to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2022 and supports broader Shakespeare funding priorities involving modern translation and performance, per Hinchilla.
A Tale of Jealousy, Exile, and Reunion
The story itself centers on Leontes, a king consumed by jealousy who imprisons Queen Hermione after wrongly suspecting her of infidelity, then exiles their newborn daughter to Bohemia, per the Morning Journal's account. Raised by shepherds far from the palace, the girl grows up, falls in love with a prince, and eventually returns to her father's kingdom with him — a plot that swings from tragedy toward hope and family renewal, which is why scholars sometimes classify the play as a romance or problem play rather than a strict comedy or drama.
Tracy Young structured her translation to preserve Shakespeare's original meter, rhyme, and rhetoric while updating archaic vocabulary for contemporary clarity, according to research shared by LAFPI. Young is no stranger to Great Lakes Theater — this is her fourth production with the company, following her 2014 direction of The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Producing Artistic Director Sara Bruner specifically invited her back to helm The Winter's Tale, the Morning Journal reports.
From Boise to Cleveland, a Consortium in Motion
Before landing at the Hanna Theatre, this production of The Winter's Tale wrapped a two-week run in Idaho on August 29. The three organizations form a consortium, and the 2026 production is traveling from Idaho to Ohio. The consortium is part of the new Play On Shakespeare partnership, which was announced in May 2026 as a five-year collaboration involving four major productions, regional educational initiatives, and a planned world premiere translation of Hamlet, as reported by American Theatre.
A 65-Year Legacy at the Hanna Theatre
Great Lakes Theater's roots stretch back to 1962, when it was founded in Lakewood, Ohio, as the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival on a $50,000 budget by local civic leaders and founding artistic director Arthur Lithgow — father of actor John Lithgow, who performed with the festival during its inaugural season, according to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. The company now calls Playhouse Square's Hanna Theatre home, an intimate 550-seat venue that reopened in 2008, per Playhouse Square.
The Winter's Tale fits into a milestone lineup for the company. Great Lakes Theater's 65th anniversary 2026–27 season at Playhouse Square includes six mainstage shows, among them Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, a second Play On Shakespeare translation — The Comedy of Errors — and Les Misérables, according to Great Lakes Theater's own season announcement. Bruner programmed the full slate to mark the anniversary.
Beyond the Mainstage: Education and Access
The company's reach extends well past ticket sales at the Hanna Theatre. Great Lakes Theater's educational outreach serves more than 30,000 students from 250 schools across 20 Northeast Ohio counties every year through student matinees and classroom workshops, and offers tickets for patrons under 25 starting at $17, according to the theater's own program details. Tickets for The Winter's Tale itself range from $23 to $103, and the company can be reached at 216-241-6000 for more information, the Morning Journal notes.
