Education & Engagement

PlayMakers Mobile

“It’s clear that it doesn’t take a five-figure budget to produce compelling Shakespeare. It only takes five actors, an audience willing to believe, and a company willing to reach out to them.”

Byron Woods, Indy Week
PlayMakers Mobile is a relatively new initiative aimed at taking all the great theatre that we’re doing inside our amazing building and sharing it with our community.

Through partnerships with area non-profits, community organizations, and local schools and libraries, in locations across the Triangle, PlayMakers presents professional-quality, bare bones productions of Shakespeare plays and more, cut to ninety minutes or less. In doing so, we aim to connect with new audiences in their own spaces, truly meeting them where they live. By revealing theatre to be accessible, relevant, and vital, PlayMakers Mobile builds a new audience for these timeless plays and allows PlayMakers to foster new relationships throughout the region.

Each of our tour stops is absolutely free to audience members thanks to the Friends of PlayMakers and donations to our annual fund. Give a gift today!

Join us for our next show

The Tempest

by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
directed by TRACY BERSLEY

February 18-26, 2023


More About PlayMakers Mobile

11-17-15-playmakers-vintage-image

PlayMakers Mobile is a relatively new initiative aimed at taking all the great theatre that we’re doing inside our amazing building and sharing it with our community. In many ways, this is not a new initiative at all. The very beginning of PlayMakers’ hundred-year history involved the company touring into North Carolina communities and in 2016, PlayMakers’ new Producing Artistic Director, Vivienne Benesch, decided it was time to take up that mantle again. “My impulse when I got here was that we needed to connect again with our communities,” she said. “We’ve grown the work that we’ve done here within the Joan H. Gillings Center for Dramatic Art and that’s wonderful, but we need to share what goes on here.”

“So 100 years later, we are getting back on the road and connecting with our communities again.”
Vivienne Benesch

Through partnerships with area non-profits, community organizations, and local schools and libraries, in locations across the Triangle, PlayMakers presents professional-quality, bare bones productions of Shakespeare plays and more, cut to ninety minutes or less. In doing so, we aim to connect with new audiences in their own spaces, truly meeting them where they live. By revealing theatre to be accessible, relevant, and vital, PlayMakers Mobile builds a new audience for these timeless plays and allows PlayMakers to foster new relationships throughout the region.


Photos and Video

Click here to read more about UNC’s spotlight on last season’s Mobile Shakespeare!

Click below for full photo


Be a Part of the Tour

90-minute total presentation time
70-minute production
10 minutes of pre- and post-show audience engagement activities
Minimal technical needs!

You provide:
• 20’ x 20’ square space (ideal; negotiable).
• Seats surrounding playing area on all four sides.

We provide:
• Actors, costumes, and minimal set.
• Simple sound equipment

Do you want your community organization, school, or non-profit to be included on the PlayMakers Mobile tour? Contact PlayMakers’ Producing Associate Chelsea James for more information: ccjames@email.unc.edu