Renowned scholar, professor and critic Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor at Yale University and Berg Professor of English at NYU, will make his acting debut starring in a reading entitled The Falstaffiad, which celebrates "the corpulent knight" through Shakespeare's Henry IV and Henry V. The Oct. 30 American Repertory Theatre reading benefits the A.R.T./MXAT Institute for Advanced Theatre Training.
Bloom's reading will be followed by a "brief prose epilogue in the spirit of Shakespeare" and a reception with the cast.
Directed by Karin Coonrod (A.R.T.'s The Idiots Karamazov, NY Shakespeare Festival's/Joseph Papp Public Theatre's Henry VI), Bloom's cast will comprise members of the A.R.T. company and the A.R.T./MXAT institute as well as Harvard undergraduates.
A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Bloom has penned more than 20 books including "The Western Canon," "The Book of J," and the 1999 bestseller, "Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human," a study of all of the Bard's plays.
Ticket prices for the benefit are $50. Production sources indicate that the reading will take place at the Hasty Pudding Theatre, 12 Holyoke St. in Cambridge. For tickets visit the A.R.T. box office at 64 Brattle Street in Cambridge or call (617) 547-8300. -- By Murdoch McBride