Washington Shakespeare Company to Reprise 'Klingon' Performance

Dilemma: you can't decide between a night out at the theater and old Star Trek re-runs on the TV.

Well, this Sunday, if you're a lucky ticker-holder, your problem is solved . The Washington Shakespeare Company will do a repeat performance of their fall benefit, "By Any Other Name: An Evening of Shakespeare in Klingon." The show, scheduled for 7:30 p.m. in the Spectrum Theater at Artisphere in Rosslyn, is sold out.

"It's very entertaining," said Chris Henley, artistic director for the Washington Shakespeare Company. The company will act out scenes translated into Klingon from both "Hamlet" and "Much Ado About Nothing."

But not all is lost for you Trekkies out there didn't manage to snag tickets to the event - the bulk of which were sold through Groupon.com. The BBC will be filming the production to include portions of it in an upcoming episode of "Planet Word," a five-part series on language. The show's host, actor Stephen Fry, will also attend the Sunday night performance.

Henley said the show will be broadcast in Europe this year or next, and will air in America on PBS or BBC America sometime after that. There are no firm broadcast dates yet, he said.

"To be included in a BBC broadcast...is going to be really exciting," Henley said.

Mark Okrand, chairman of the Washington Shakepeare Company's board, is credited with developing the Klingon language for the early Star Trek films.

Click on the to this right of this article to watch Okrand explain how he created Klingon.

"Mark's presentation on how he developed the languages and some of his stories were wildly entertaining to the audience when we did it in the fall," Henley said. "We've also gotten inquiries from other cities - Toronto and San Francisco, I think, asking us if we would take this on the road. There is a wicked amount of interest in it."