{"id":313675,"date":"2026-05-29T08:26:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T08:26:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/313675\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T08:26:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T08:26:18","slug":"hamlet-musical-on-americas-founding-featured-in-41st-season-of-texas-shakespeare-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/313675\/","title":{"rendered":"Hamlet, musical on America\u2019s founding featured in 41st season of Texas Shakespeare Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">KILGORE, Texas (KLTV) &#8211; The 41st season of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.texasshakespeare.com\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.texasshakespeare.com\/\">Texas Shakespeare Festival<\/a> will feature performances including \u201cHamlet,\u201d \u201cA Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream,\u201d and \u201c1776,\u201d a musical based on America\u2019s founding. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Actors are coming in from across the country to perform in Kilgore.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Nicholas Dipuma, who plays both Hamlet and Thomas Jefferson, said this is his fifth year with the festival. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cI really love the community,\u201d Dipuma said. \u201cIt\u2019s not everywhere in the country where you work that the community loves you so much and takes care of you as much as East Texas does. And so, it\u2019s always a pleasure to be here and give back to them what they give to us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">This is artistic director Meaghan\u2019s Simpson\u2019s sixth year leading the festival. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cThis year we just really wanted to kind of double down on all the things that we do well,\u201d Simpson mentioned. \u201cOne of the things we wanted to really highlight and celebrate is the America 250, and so we\u2019re doing \u201d1776\u2033 in honor of that and to kind of remind us about the founding of this country and the good and the bad and the challenges that our founding fathers faced.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Simpson said she hopes to create the next generation of theater lovers. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cWe all love Netflix, and going to see the movies, but when you come to the theater, and if you see good theater, and you see it well done, I believe you will become a theater lover,\u201d Simpson said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The festival kicks off June 25. <\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 KLTV. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KILGORE, Texas (KLTV) &#8211; The 41st season of the Texas Shakespeare Festival will feature performances including \u201cHamlet,\u201d \u201cA&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313676,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-313675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313675\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}