Love's Labour's Lost

Who can keep their lofty oaths when faced with a beautiful princess?

Shakespeare’s classic adventure is reimagined with a contemporary translation, and comes to life with rollicking misadventures, mistaken identities, and live music.

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Love's Labour's Lost

by William Shakespeare

Translated and adapted by Edmund Stapleton

Timms Centre for the Arts

October 8-16, 2021

Adaptation by Edmund Stapleton

Preview October 7, 2021

Matinee Performance October 14, 2021

Evening performances start at 7:30pm,

Matinee performance starts at 12:30pm.

Studio Theatre will not be not offering subscriptions for the 2021 – 2022 season. Alternatively, we are offering FLEX passes. FLEX passes allow you to redeem three tickets at a discounted rate. These three tickets can be used to three different productions or all ticketed to a single production. They can be redeemed in person at the Timms Centre box office or by emailing uastudio@ualberta.ca.

Single tickets and FLEX passes will be available for purchase at least two weeks prior to the first performance of each production. We are encouraging purchases and/or donations to be made online HERE.

Ticket Prices:

Single ticket evening : Adult $25.00, Senior $22.00, & Student $12.00

Single ticket matinee : Adult $20.00, Senior $18.00 & Student $12.00

FLEX passes: Adult/Senior $60.00 & Student $30.00

Discounted ticket prices:

Preview: All Tickets $5.00

Half price Mondays: Adult $12.50, and Senior $11.00 & Student $6.00

This season the Timms Centre daytime box office hours will vary. On performance days, the box office will open one hour prior to curtain. At this time, in person box office sales will be cash only.

Our mandate is to keep everyone safe while in the Timms Centre for the Arts. We are following all current COVID-19 protocols as dictated by AHS and the University of Alberta. Please visit THIS LINK for all up to date protocols.

We are happy to answer questions or inquiries about tickets and our 2021-2022 season by email (uastudio@ualberta.ca) or

phone (780-492-2495).

See Love's Labour's Lost

Director's Notes

Explore our Interview with Director Edmund Stapleton.

I have a confession to make. I don’t know what a bodkin is. Not really. I think it might be a needle. Or maybe a knife. It must be something pointy, that much I’m sure of. And what about a fardel? Is it a physical object? And a heavy one at that? Or perhaps it means something more psychological like pain and suffering. And the contumely of a proud man? I’m completely lost.

Three words from perhaps the most famous speech in the English language, Shakespeare’s “To be or not to be,” that light my mind ablaze with questions. Of course, sitting at home I can glance down at the editor’s footnotes of whatever annotated edition of Hamlet I happen to have purchased from the used bookstore; a momentary hiccup in my reading experience, but at least I now know that contumely means someone’s insulting behaviour. I was pretty darn close about the meanings of bodkin and fardel. Go me! But what if I wasn’t reading this text? What if it was performed before me, as I sat in a darkened theatre, well over an hour into the performance filled with other words I hardly recognized, peppered with pronouns and verb tenses that no one uses anymore, and heard only once with no ability to pause the action and know for sure what is being said?