Shakespearean plays often include fight scenes, but they’re not usually produced in a war zone. Author Qais Akbar Omar has staged a play in Afghanistan and is coming to CU Boulder to talk about it.

Omar will discuss his experience staging Love’s Labour’s Lost in Kabul in 2005. The event is called “Staging Shakespeare in a War Zone: Values and Consequences” and is scheduled on Monday, Aug. 29, at the University Theatre on the University of Colorado Boulder campus.

A reception with light refreshments will begin at 5 p.m., and Omar’s presentation will start at 5:30. The event is sponsored by Friends of the CU Libraries and is part of the Shakespeare First Folio tour.

Parking will be available in the Euclid AutoPark, on the corner of Euclid and Broadway in Boulder.

The author will sign copies of his book, A Night in the Emperor’s Garden, immediately following the lecture. This event is free and open to the public, but advance registration is encouraged.

For more information, contact Lisa Kippur, lisa.kippur@colorado.edu or 303-492-7512.

Omar’s appearance is one of several events coinciding with the First Folio tour.

First Folio! The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare, on tour from the Folger Shakespeare Library, will be open to the public at the CU Art Museum August 9-31.

The First Folio is the first complete collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays, published in 1623, seven years after his death. Compiled by two of Shakespeare’s fellow actors, it preserves 36 of Shakespeare’s plays.

Without it, the world would not have 18 of those plays, including Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night, The Tempest and Antony and Cleopatra.

The First Folio itself will be opened to the most quoted line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “to be or not to be.” A multi-panel exhibition exploring Shakespeare’s impact, then and now, will be accompanied by digital content and interactive activities.  

The CU Art Musuem asks that visitors register for a viewing time.