Would you say you've chased Shakespeare, Shakespeare has chased you, or a combination of both? (Serious question btw...and how have you never managed Much Ado? One of my favs!)
Before my time at Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington DC, outside of School, I had only ever done one Shakespeare, a Hamlet. Doing six years at some place called the Shakespeare Theater Company will knock some titles off the list VERY quickly. Since then, I have been "typecast" as a Shakespeare Stage Manager - in the two years since I have left STC in DC - and moved to NYC, I still have done six Shakespeares (Cymbeline, Measure, All's Well, Titus, AYLI, and now Lear).
You know as a stage manager, you can get type cast - you are a "regional theater SM", you are an "Off-Broadway SM", you "are a musical SM" - it's hard to fight these stereotypes, and I sort have given up - and now are just getting really good at spinning - I can do long plays, with larges casts, and multiple scene changes - with a strong detail to text and history of the piece, with up to 18 points of automation, with casts members who often have multiple tracks.
Funny story, I am not really fond of Shakespeare - I don't usually rush out and see other people's Shakespeare. It's not my entertainment of choice. What I am fond of is working on good text, with good actors and fantastic designers and directors. That's where working on Shakespeare comes in handy - they often tend to be "designy" - which I professionally "get off on". So, I think the Bard chases me, I play hard to get, but at the end of the day - I give in.
Oh, I have no idea why I haven't done MUCH ADO . . . A friend of mine has done 11 productions of Lear, this is my first as PSM (I subbed on deck on the Bob Falls Production a few years back). I have been involved in 5 productions of Titus, my friends has done zero.
King John will be the hard one - although the Henry's get tricky as well - maybe I can find them. It will get down to me starting to track who is doing those shows and offer to do them at a cut rate . . .
(And Thanks to Kay for pointing out some errors with my code - the new web page was my first HTML working at code level project I did - I mean I started with a template, but my husband made me go do all the edits at code level. I had four weeks off, I had to have a little project.)