The Public Theater has assembled a starry cast for the triumphant 2025 return of Free Shakespeare in the Park. The Off-Broadway company will reopen Central Park's newly refurbished Delacorte Theater with a production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night starring Peter Dinklage, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Lupita Nyong'o, and Sandra Oh.

Dates and ticketing information are to be announced. Twelfth Night is currently slated to be the series' sole 2025 offering due to the Delacorte's renovation timeline.

Public Associate Artistic Director Saheem Ali will direct the new staging, which will feature Dinklage as Malvolio, Ferguson as Andrew Aguecheek, Nyong'o as Viola, and Oh as Olivia. Additional casting and creative team members are to be announced.

The Delacorte Theater began renovations following the summer 2023 Free Shakespeare in the Park season, remaining dark this year so that work could continue. The newly refurbished venue—a partnership between The Public, Central Park Conservancy, and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation—will increase its accessibility, streamline backstage operations, add a revitalized exterior and lighting improvements, provide newly renovated bathrooms, and more.

The upcoming Twelfth Night will be the seventh time the romantic comedy has been presented in the series, following earlier stagings in 1969, 1986, 1989, 2002, and 2009, plus a Public Works musical adaptation (by Kwame Kwei-Armah and 2024 Tony winner Shaina Taub) in 2018.

"Twelfth Night is the epitome of joy," says Ali in a statement. "It also happens to be the first production I ever saw at the Delacorte, as a college student taking the Chinatown bus from Boston. I’m delighted to be reuniting with my dear friend Lupita Nyong’o, joined by fellow Public Theater alums Peter Dinklage, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and Sandra Oh. Shakespeare in the Park is a gift to our city. I’m honored to be helming this production as we reopen The Delacorte after an extensive and essential revitalization."

Since its inception in 1954, the Free Shakespeare in the Park series has been an annual summer offering completely free to the public, with tickets usually distributed at various locations throughout the boroughs of NYC. The program often recruits A-list actors to lead its outdoor productions, which focus on the Shakespeare canon but have also included stagings of such works as Into the Woods, Hercules, and Hair. In past productions of Twelfth Night alone, the series has seen performances from Jeff Goldblum, Anne Hathaway, Nikki M. James, Hamish Linklater, Audra McDonald, Michelle Pfeiffer, Fisher Stevens, Julia Stiles, Michael Stuhlbarg, and more.

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Photos: From Meryl Streep to James Earl Jones to Anne Hathaway: Look Through the History of Shakespeare in the Park

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