Red Bull Theater

Red Bull Theater is dedicated to the presentation of vital and imaginative productions of heightened language plays and to the development of new plays written in a similar vein. With a special focus on the Jacobean plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, Red Bull Theater aspires to challenge the intellect and engage the imagination of today's theatergoers through language-based, company-created, resonantly provocative stagings of great classic stories. Red Bull Theater takes its name from one of the leading theaters in London during Shakespeare's era, built around 1600. The original Red Bull was often raided by the authorities for performing "drolls" when it was illegal to perform plays, and it was the first of the English theaters to reopen after the years of Puritan rule during which plays were banned. Embracing this rejuvenating spirit, Red Bull Theater aims to be in the vanguard of a new classical theater for the new century, creating a home for plays of heightened language and epic expression in intimate, imaginative productions. Shakespeare wrote over half his plays under the rule of King James. Some thirty other major playwrights also flourished during this time, producing hundreds of plays. Compared to the kind of writing for the theater that had been common during Queen Elizabeth's reign, the Jacobean plays differ markedly in their subject matter, language, and style. Red Bull Theater embraces these plays as the touchstone of its work, aiming to explore plays of a vigorously heightened language, new and old, from many different periods and cultures.