Shakespeare

Monica Payne recaps the 26th international Gdansk Shakespeare Festival, where artists from around the globe adapted, deconstructed, and celebrated Shakespeare’s plays through boldly contemporary productions.

Robert Hubbard discusses the South Dakota Shakespeare Festival production of Othello, which Tara Moses adapted and directed through an Indigenous Futurist lens. The resulting production employed its Shakespearean source text to model solidarity between Tribal Sovereignty and Black Liberation movements.

Robert Hubbard sits down with Dr. Nicolette Bethel and Philip A. Burrows to discuss their creation of the annual Shakespeare in Paradise Festival in the Bahamas.

Carla Della Gatta offers strategies and considerations for theatremakers who are looking to create bilingual or semi-bilingual renditions of the canonized classics.

Madeline Sayet argues that promoting Shakespeare as the best writer of all time is a dangerous and white supremacist viewpoint, and she believes it’s time to interrogate the Bard’s placecent as the pinnacle of theatrical achievement.

Holly Derr interviews Lavina Jadhwani about the document she created called Dismantling Anti-Black Linguistic Racism in Theatre, which offers several examples of potentially anti-Black language, such as Ethiopian, master, and minstrel; their use in Shakespeare; why they might be problematic; and possible substitutions.

In this last installment of the Beyond the Western Canon series, Sadie Berlin questions how marginalized voices are represented on stage and calls for more experimental work by artists of color on Canadian stages.

Loren Noveck discusses the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Play On! project, which commissioned thirty-six playwrights to translate the entire corpus of Shakespeare into contemporary modern English.

Aley O’Mara reflects on Daniel Winder’s Hamlet and speaks to the lead—trans actor Jenet Le Lacheur—about the titular character in this production being nonbinary and transfeminine.

Professor Christin Essin talks about problematic staging of gendered violence at a production she recently brought her students to and the importance of content warnings and taking care of survivors in theatrical works.

Robert Hubbard discussions Madeline Sayet’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the South Dakota Theatre Festival.

Charlene V. Smith talks about asking hard questions around the interpretation of early modern English classics, Brave Spirits Theatre’s production of The Changeling, and five tips for dealing with sexual assault in art responsibly.

Emer McHugh and Jess R. Pfeffer discuss Hamlet’s nunnery scene, how gendered violence onstage is often about the perpetrator’s character development, problematic assaults on TV, and more.

Artistic directors Joe Haj of Minneapolis’s Guthrie Theater and Rob Melrose of Houston’s Alley Theatre talk about confidence and fearlessness, a company of actors, fighting for the classics, and more.

Carley B. Johnson examines two recent projects that link theatre with virtual reality and augmented reality.