King Lear

William Shakespeare’s *King Lear* stages a political collapse that begins as a family ritual: an aging ruler tests his daughters’ declarations of love, then trades authority and land for flattery. The decision fractures the kingdom and the household, pushing characters toward estrangement, cruelty, and a hard-earned clarity shaped by blindness and madness. Now performed live at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, the play sits in New York’s long tradition of reinterpreting Shakespeare in intimate downtown rooms. Its bleakness is not decorative; it functions as an inquiry into power’s ability to corrode judgment.