The English Channel , by Robert Brustein, was produced as a reading by Abingdon Theater Company in March 2008.

Update: The English Channel is being performed at Abindon Theater Company in September, with a different cast and a different director. We wish them the best. - Cat

In keeping with my Shakespeare-themed year (I'll be directing Twelfth Night in the fall) I am working on a reading of a new play this Monday night for Abingdon Theater Company, and it's called The English Channel. It is written by the highly regarded founder of American Repertory Theater, Robert Brustein. It was also one of 6 finalists for the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust and American Theatre Critics Association's 2008 New Play Award. How cool is that?

The play is about the Bard himself, well before he became "The Bard" and focuses on his relationship with Christopher Marlowe, Henry (the Earl of Southampton and Shakespeare's patron) and Emilia Lanier, the woman believed to be the Dark Lady of Shakespeare's sonnets.

Brustein smiles at the notion that The English Channel is sexy and bawdy. ``I hope that's the impression audiences get," he says. ``Shakespeare is very bawdy. He was a naughty schoolboy. You can't read a speech without finding puns, and all the apocryphal stories about him involve sex."