What is learned from losing everything? In King Lear, a tyrant is brought low—and to self-knowledge—by a cruel cascade of events he himself sets in motion. As a family tears itself apart and a kingdom descends into chaos, Shakespeare charts the unraveling of a ruler who believes himself godlike. It depicts, at once, the fracturing of state, family, and self. In their sixth collaboration at TFANA, Arin Arbus directs John Douglas Thompson—described by The New York Times as “perhaps the greatest Shakespeare interpreter in contemporary American theater”—in one of the most titanic roles in the dramatic canon.