What if Shakespeare Grew Up in Iowa?

Posted on July 6, 2012 by Abigail Browning

In the Oregon Shakespeare Festival‘s production, the Very Merry Wives of Windsor, Iowa, our favorite farcical Falstaff is a recently-failed presidential candidate who finds himself down and out in Windsor, where the wives are plentiful. So plentiful, in fact, that a few of them are married to each other, which turns this adaptation of a Shakespeare play into a hilarious look at the ever-controversial issue of same-sex marriage. Except in this Windsor, Iowa, the citizens are more concerned with comical revenge than with the sanctity of the American family, which makes this play a refreshing take on an issue that we’re sure even Will himself would enjoy.

Abigail Browning, Founder and Managing Editor, a native of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, received her MFA in Poetry at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Abigail has poems either published or forthcoming in the Yemassee Journal Online, The Greensboro Review, Linebreak, and RHINO Poetry. In addition, she was honored to receive the Amon Liner Poetry Award, the Noel Callow/Academy of American Poets’ Prize, and was a finalist for the Linda Flowers NC Arts Prize. She also has a passion for jazz music and dance, and teaches swing-era dances in her free time: www.abigailbrowning.com. Currently, she is studying Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media as a PhD at NC State in Raleigh, NC.