Adirondack Shakespeare Company (or ADK Shakes) gears up for its fifth season of autumn repertory shows on tour throughout the region. But this season is different. For a couple of reasons.

Each autumn for the past few years, ADK Shakes has presented Hamlet, one of the greatest ghost stories ever told. This year, the Company’s Artistic Director takes the stage as the Prince of Denmark, and is she ever excited. This is not the first time — even this year — that the Company has explored the fluid nature of gender on stage. In the spring, Simone Stadler took the stage as Macbeth and opposite her, Sean Lounsbury played the role of Lady Macbeth in a wonderfully evocative gender-swapping of the chilling couple.

Ms. Bradway’s turn as Hamlet also follows her dissertation defense at St. John’s University on September 12th. “It is a truly humbling experience,” she confesses, “to be taking on the greatest — and largest — role in the English language while at the same time writing and preparing to defend my dissertation. At least I’m also writing about Hamlet!” Her project is on Shakespeare and Performance, and is also interested in how gender works on stage in contemporary Shakespearean productions.

So — ADK Shakes has a lady treading the boards as Hamlet, and a lady with a newly minted Ph.D. at that. But that’s not all that’s special about this season! Ms. Bradway and the Company’s Executive Director, Patrick Siler, are also tying the knot this October right in the midst of the Autumn Festival Season. After more than a decade of partnership on and off the stage, the couple will be married on October 8th following a special performance of Love’s Labour’s Lost, a performance that is open to the public as well as to guests of the wedding.

Adirondack Shakespeare Company’s Autumn Festival Season includes Hamlet, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and their original production Songs of the Iroquois: Turtle Island. Public performances run September 26 – October 15, and the Company tours to area schools through October 20. Find out more information at www.adkshakes.org. facebook.com/adkshakes, or by emailing info@adkshakes.org.