The National Building Museum’s Great Hall will host a Shakespearean theater this summer.

Geoff Livingston / Flickr

The National Building Museum, it seems, is growing up. Where the museum once played around in a ball pit or rolled down a giant hill, this summer it will study Shakespeare and put on a play.

The annual summer exhibition is where the museum presents its splashiest, most photogenic work of the year in its Great Hall. Previous exhibits have included that ball pit (The Beach) a giant maze (BIG Maze), and a half-completed mansion (Fun House). The exhibits are typically among the biggest museum events of the year—or at least the most-Instagrammed.

This year, the National Building Museum will host Shakespeare’s Playhouse, an enclosed stage inspired by Elizabethan theaters. Those theaters were typically open-air thrust stages with audience members on the floor and in balconies on three sides. Picture the Globe Theatre in London—aka the one in Shakespeare in Love—or D.C.’s own Folger Theatre.

In fact, Folger is one of the partners on the project, and it will stage its summer production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream inside the exhibit.

While the play occupies Playhouse’s boards at night, visitors will be able to try out workshops on stage combat, Elizabethan-era ruff-making, or theater design during the day. The theater will also be open for exploring.

The Building Museum typically partners with a design company to helm its big summer blockbuster. This time, the University of South Carolina has the gig of designing the massive theater.

Robert Richmond, a professor at the school’s theater department, will direct Midsummer. (He has a longstanding relationship with Folger, having directed last season’s Macbeth and Nell Gwynnamong others.) Tickets to the show will be available for purchase directly from Folger.

The collaboration is one of several planned for Folger during the theater and library’s extensive renovation, which is set to be completed in 2022.

Meanwhile, the Building Museum is currently closed for renovations to its 19th-century ceramic floor. It’s expected to reopen in March.

Shakespeare’s Playhouse will be on view July 4-Sept. 7.

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