Chesapeake Shakespeare Company’s touring and community engagement initiative Shakespeare Beyond returns for a third year, bringing free performances to parks and outdoor spaces all over the region. This year, they’re remounting It’s The Comedy Of Errors, Hon!, CSC’s love letter to Baltimore.

The play first opened earlier this year at the company’s Downtown Theatre during their 2024-2025 mainstage season. Adapted by CSC Founding Artistic Director Ian Gallanar from Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, this fast-paced classic is transformed into a playful celebration of Baltimore: its icons, accents, and traditions. Now performed on the Wagon—Shakespeare Beyond’s mobile performance unit—the audience is treated to an all-new production, revised to be compatible with the changing landscape of the outdoor tour.

Shows are free to attend, and in its third year, the tour reaches deeper across Maryland. “We’re enthusiastic about reaching more neighborhoods, more Marylanders, and more students this summer.” says Gallanar. Shakespeare Beyond’s first two years received overwhelmingly positive participant feedback and incredible turnout. In Summer 2024 alone, the program reached more than 3,700 people across ten neighborhoods in Baltimore City and surrounding counties. Continuing this trajectory, in Summer 2025, CSC is on track to serve over 8,000 people across the State of Maryland from Frederick to the Eastern Shore.

In addition to presenting It’s The Comedy Of Errors, Hon!, Shakespeare Beyond brings professional teaching artists to lead workshops in acting, improv, stage combat, mask making, and more. The residencies are a vital part of the tour, allowing CSC to build relationships beyond the walls of the company’s theater and discover new ways to engage people of all ages with the arts.

Last year’s season began with a brand-new mobile performance unit, which will return this year. “Designing, engineering, and building the Shakespeare Wagon meant solving challenges learned from the company’s pilot-year,” says Chester Stacy, Production Architect and Technical Director for Shakespeare Beyond. “This modest, but dynamic, 400 square feet of performance space was built from an Isuzu NPR HD with a Morgan 16-foot dry freight box. In less than two hours, a stage is built.”

The Shakespeare Wagon enables the company to travel even deeper into neighborhoods. It has the ability to stage a performance in parking lots, at street festivals, and of course, in local parks across the state of Maryland. The addition of this fully mobile stage emphasizes the mission of the program and the company’s desire to meet people where they live and work. Public performances, workshops, and collaborations with local artists in those respective towns will be open to all.