Text Work and First Folio
Instructor: Beth Wolf, Midsommer Flight Producing Artistic Director
Dates: October 17 – November 21, 2025
Time: Fridays, 9 AM – 12 PM
Tiered Pricing: $250, $300, or $350

Text work should be challenging and fun, but never scary! This six-week class is for all levels of experience, offering tools and guidance either to begin your journey with Shakespeare or to help you brush up old skills that you haven’t flexed in a while. We will dive into text work using clues from the First Folio, breaking down the steps to approach a piece of Shakespearean text from the ground up. Instructional materials will be provided. Before the first class, students should think about a character or monologue they want to work on.

Students will move through the six weeks as a cohort, learning together and supporting each other’s growth. Maximum 10 students.

Registration is closed for this class.

About the Instructor

Beth Wolf (she/her/hers) is Chicago director, coach, and the founder and Producing Artistic Director of Midsommer Flight. Beth’s Midsommer Flight credits include Love’s Labour’s Lost, Romeo and Juliet (2024 and 2013), Cymbeline, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2022 and 2012), The Tempest, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Hamlet,  As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Macbeth, and Much Ado About Nothing.

Recognition for Beth’s work includes Equity Jeff Award Nominations for Best Director for Silent Sky (2024) and Outside Mullingar (2022) at Citadel Theatre, both of which were also nominated for Best Production. Other recent credits include The Book of Will at Promethean Theatre Ensemble, The Roommate at Citadel Theatre; Non-Player Character (Non-Equity Jeff nomination, Projection Co-design) at Red Theater; and The Suffrage Plays at Artemisia. Beth was also a co-founder and the former Artistic Director of Promethean Theatre Ensemble, where previously she directed Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead, Seascape with Sharks and Dancer, Bury the Dead, The Fantasticks, and multiple Evenings of Shakespeare. Additionally, she has directed for festivals, staged readings, and assistant directed with companies all around Chicago, including Remy Bumppo, Idle Muse, the side project, Polarity Ensemble Theatre, and more. She is a proud Northwestern University graduate with a double major in theatre and gender studies.

Additional Information

All classes and workshops are offered with three Tiers of pricing. Tiered fees are our attempt at creating a structure that accounts for the wide range of incomes within our community. There are a limited number of slots available for Tier 1 and Tier 2. This is an honor system. When choosing your ticket tier, we trust you to do what is right for you and your community.