“Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead,” November 12 through 15

Thursday, November 12, through Sunday, November 15

Augustana College's Brunner Theatre Center, 3750 Seventh Avenue, Rock Island IL

Winner of four 1968 Tony Awards, including Best Play, and hailed by the New York Daily News as "a stimulating, funny, imaginative comedy," Tony and Oscar winner Tom Stoppard's Hamlet "companion" Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead opens the 2026-27 mainstage season at Augustana College's Brunner Theatre Center, the New York Times adding that this long-lauded work is "very funny, very brilliant, very chilling."

Acclaimed as a modern masterpiece, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is the fabulously inventive tale of Hamlet as told from the worm’s-eye view of the bewildered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters in Shakespeare’s play. In Stoppard’s best-known work for the stage, this Shakespearean Laurel and Hardy finally get a chance to take the leading roles, but are forced to so in a world where reality and illusion are entwined, and where fate, as Shakespeare dictated, will inevitably lead our heroes to a tragic but poignant end. Stoppard's popular play premiered with the Oxford Theatre Group at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival on August 24, 1966. Shortly thereafter, on April 11, 1967, it opened in the West End at the Old Vic, and which the comedy made its Broadway premiere at the Alvin Theatre on October 16, 1967, eventually earning eight Tony Award nominations.

Directing Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead  is Augustana's longtime Professor of Theatre Arts and department Co-Chair Jeff Coussens, whose recent productions for the college have included The Skin of Our Teeth, Our Country's Good, Tartuffe, and Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors. With Phoenix Martin serving as stage manager and Ludovica Chiovini as assistant director, additional members of Coussens' creative team include: assistant stage manager and assistant props manager Silas Menet; technical director, scenic designer, and sound designer Mike Turczynski; assistant scenic designer Rylon Hall; assistant lighting designer Jasper Thomason; costume designer Becki Arnold; assistant costume designer Emma Miller; makeup designer V Bechtel; props master Vill McIver; student composer Lauren Dobbels; deck captain Piper Priper-Frisina; deck hands TJ Decker, Ash Van Lerberghe, and Logan Smiddy; sound board operator Elliot Davis; electrician Zoey Gawthorp; wardrobe head Kayle Shimabuku; dressers An Bui and Emmy Poppy; and makeup run crew and dresser Elizabeth Lorenz.

The sweetly hapless Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are respectively portrayed by Connor Maess and Lydia Benesh, with the exuberant Player enacted by Kallik Ewen and the moddy Hamlet by Leo Kopplin. Other famed figures from Shakespeare's classic tragedy are played by Perrin Royalty (Claudius), Vanessa Williams (Gertrude), Bethany Tanchick (Ophelia); Josh Nelson (Polonius), Lex Mikulski (Fortinbras), and Isaac Perez (Horatio), with the gifted R&GAD ensemble completed by Maya Haynes, Elijah Morton, Jene Nissan, and Morgan Wehling.

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead will be staged in Augustana College's Brunner Theatre Center November 12 through 15, with performances Thursday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 1:30 p.m. Admission is $10-15, and more information and tickets are available by calling (309)794-7306 and visiting Augustana.edu/tickets.