PREVIEW: SHAKESPEARE SAVED MY LIFE

 

HOW SHAKESPEARE SAVED MY LIFE is Jacob Ming-Trent telling his own story of a turbulent childhood, rejection, homelessness, drugs, family conflict, theater, poetry, hip-hop, and the discovery of language as a route toward survival.

The production, written and performed by Jacob Ming-Trent himself, is currently playing in the Shiva Theater at The Public Theater. It is a Red Bull Theater production, co-produced with Berkeley Repertory Theatre and Folger Theatre. The New York engagement began September 15 and has been extended through October 25, 2026. The performance runs about 90 minutes without intermission.

Jacob Ming-Trent has built a remarkable solo show around an unusual question: can Shakespeare actually save a life?

The Shakespeare connection is deeply personal. As a teenager, Ming-Trent trained in The Public's Shakespeare Lab Jr. The new play mixes Shakespeare with other voices that helped form him — including rappers, poets, and writers — rather than treating Shakespeare as an isolated monument of high culture. One performer's attempt to explain why words — Shakespeare's and other people's — can become part of a person's machinery for surviving.

Ming-Trent’s Broadway credits include Gypsy, Shrek the Musical and Hands on a Hardbody. At The Public he has appeared in The Harder They Come, Merry Wives, Father Comes Home From the Wars, Twelfth Night, Cymbeline, and The Tempest. He has also appeared in Red Bull Theater's Medea Re-Versed and The Alchemist.

The play is directed by Tony Taccone, former artistic director of Berkeley Rep, with a creative team that includes Tiffany Rachelle Stewart for movement, Takeshi Kata for scenic design, Danielle Preston for costumes, Alan C. Edwards for lighting, Jake Rodriguez for original music and sound, and Alexander V. Nichols for projections.

Reviews have consistently praised Ming-Trent's physical energy, charisma and ability to inhabit the many people in his autobiographical story. The Folger production was described by Broadway World as a powerful, moving testimony, with particular praise for the range of characters Ming-Trent creates by himself onstage.

Some critics find the combination of autobiography, Shakespeare, hip-hop, and theatrical testimony exciting and moving; others have questioned whether the play fully demonstrates exactly how Shakespeare transformed Ming-Trent's life, or have found its narrative somewhat episodic.

The consensus, even among the more skeptical reviews, is that Ming-Trent himself is an unusually forceful performer.

 

HOW SHAKESPEARE SAVED MY LIFE

The Public Theater — Shiva Theater
425 Lafayette Street, New York
Through October 25, 2026

THE PUBLIC THEATER
https://publictheater.org/productions/season/2627/how-shakespeare-saved-my-life/

RED BULL THEATER
https://www.redbulltheater.com/