The eternal tragedy of power—in which the conflictual relationship between fathers and their daughters and sons plays out in a story of paternity and inheritance—bursts onto the scene, interwoven with the full spectrum of passions, betrayals, and miseries of human existence. Written in the early seventeenth century, the play is based on the legend of Lear, King of Britain before it became part of the Roman Empire, whose story had already been recounted in chronicles, poems, and sermons, but whom Shakespeare immortalized through a cast of powerfully dramatic characters, which Lavia’s direction highlights and brings to life through a large ensemble of 14 performers. 
Lavia defines *King Lear* as a story of losses: the loss of reason, the loss of the kingdom, the loss of brotherhood. In his director’s notes, he writes: “All that remains is to live through a storm. But Lear’s storm is the storm of his mind. The storm of humanity’s mind, the death of the man who has abandoned his Being. And now he lives his non-Being in the storm of the mind, in the storm that overwhelms him. And everyone is overwhelmed. Except for the one who has suffered more than the others and can ‘be-King’ of suffering as a path to knowledge.”