Casting Announced for Tempest, Cymbeline in Park

The cast of The Public Theater’s free Shakespeare in the Park production of Much Ado About Nothing. Photo: Joan Marcus

This summer's free Shakespeare in the Park sponsored by the Public Theater will feature Shakespeare’s late romances with The Tempest, directed by Tony Award nominee Michael Greif, and Cymbeline, directed by Tony Award winner Daniel Sullivan. 

Jesse Tyler Ferguson will return to the Park this summer as Trinculo in The Tempest. Hamish Linklater and Lily Rabe team up again with Sullivan on Cymbeline to play Posthumus Leonatus/Cloten and Imogen, respectively.

The Tempest will kick off the summer with Academy Award nominee Sam Waterston (“The Newsroom”) playing Prospero, his 13th Shakespearean production at The Public. He first premiered on the Delacorte stage in As You Like It in 1963. 

In addition to Waterston, The Tempest cast will include Whitney Bashor (Juno); Louis Cancelmi (Caliban); Francesca Carpanini(Miranda); Nicholas Christopher (Boatswain, Spirit); Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Trinculo); Olga Karmansky (Iris); Tamika Lawrence(Ceres); Danny Mastrogiorgio (Stephano); Charles Parnell (Alonso); Chris Perfetti (Ariel); Rodney Richardson (Ferdinand); Cotter Smith (Antonio); and Bernard White (Gonzalo). The non-equity ensemble includes Jordan Barrow, Chloe Fox, Thomas Gibbons, Sunny Hitt, Brandon Kalm, Rico Lebron, Suki Lopez, and Matthew Oaks.

The Tempest will run for five weeks from Wednesday, May 27 through Sunday, July 5, with an official press opening on Tuesday, June 16. Cymbeline, beginning Thursday, July 23, has added an additional three performances to the four-week run that will close on Sunday, Aug. 23 and have an official press opening on Monday, Aug. 10.


Since 1962, more than 5 million people have enjoyed more than 150 free productions of Shakespeare and other classical works and musicals at the Delacorte Theater.  Free tickets to The Public Theater’s Free Shakespeare in the Park are distributed, two per person, at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park on the day of the show. The Public Theater will again offer free tickets through our Virtual Ticketing lottery on the day of the show atwww.publictheater.org. The Delacorte Theater in Central Park is accessible by entering at 81st Street and Central Park West or at 79th Street and Fifth Avenue.