The 2005-2006 season of the University of Missouri-Rolla Campus Performing Arts Series continues this month with a performance of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth presented by The Acting Company. The performance will be held at 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16, in Leach Theatre of Castleman Hall, 10th and Main streets on the UMR campus. Admission is $28 for adults and $18 for youth ages 18 and younger.

Combining swift action and soaring poetry, this last of Shakespeare’s great tragedies follows one man’s rash power play for the crown. Ambition infects Macbeth’s brain like a virus upon hearing three witches predict that he will one day be king. Spurred on by his equally ambitious wife, he murders the good King Duncan. One evil deed leads to the next, unleashing an escalating cascade of violence, guilt, sleeplessness, paranoia and madness.

Macbeth reflects on his actions in some of the most sublime soliloquies in the Shakespearean canon as he rushes headlong towards his demise.

This performance of Macbeth continues The Acting Company’s 32-year commitment to producing the work of the world’s greatest playwright. The company has performed more than 100 plays for more than 3 million people worldwide. The Acting Company’s production of Macbeth is part of Shakespeare in American Communities: Shakespeare for a New Generation, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts in cooperation with Arts Midwest.

The next installment in the UMR Campus Performing Arts Series will be a performance by Paige O’Hara, “From Belle to Broadway,” at 8 p.m. Friday, March 10. O’Hara is best known as the voice of Belle from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. The performance also features her husband, Michael Piontek.

Although season tickets are no longer available, if you plan to attend three or more performances this season, the Leach Theatre Box Office is offering a discount on the purchase of tickets to multiple shows in the Campus Performing Arts Series. Patrons who purchase, at the same time, single tickets to three or more different shows receive $4 off the price of each ticket.

For more information about the Feb. 16 performance of Macbeth or the multi-show discount, contact the UMR Leach Theatre Box Office at (573) 341-4219. More information about the UMR Campus Performing Arts Series is available online at campus.mst.edu/~cpas .