Shakespeare

Jennifer Wintzer shares SHAKE 38’s Measure4Measure Project connecting youth in St. Louis with youth in New York City around the conflict in Ferguson.

Dramaturg Philippa Kelly considers new interpretations of Ophelia.

David Dudley talks to Colleen Sullivan of Shakespeare Academy at Stratford, where they are about to begin a second season of educating theatremakers in ensemble and Shakespeare.

Cora Swise comments on a recent production of Hamlet that had the audience giggling, and realizes that even in times of sadness, people need laughter.

Brains tend eventually to shrink and atrophy, edging us further from—or closer to—our true, instinctual responses. It’s a lucky few who, to the very end, are cognitively able to match the sum of their remaining parts. “I think, therefore I am” takes on a whole new meaning in this twenty-first century, when the intact minds of human beings—those cores of sentience moderated by reason—will likely be long outstripped by medically renovated bodies.

Shakespearean Actor Samuel Taylor shares his insight on how to make Shakespeare theatre more attractive to a contemporary and millennial audience.

Imagine, if you will, a slumber party. A group of tweens huddles around a television in the carpeted family room of a two-story house. Most of them stare, mouths slightly open, entranced by leading man Leonardo DiCaprio. Caught up in his twenty-something good looks, they have found what they’re looking for. But not all of them. Not me.

I offered to cut "Henry IV, Part One" down to ninety minutes, schedule two rehearsals and one performance, and find a part for anyone who wanted to participate. Eighteen actors jumped on board, and I was determined to not direct them in this play.

I feel fairly confident that if some sort of census was to be taken from the last decade of American theatermaking, counting up the total number of productions by playwrights who are dead versus playwrights who are alive, The Zombies would outnumber those of us with pulses by a large margin. Which sincerely begs to question: Do artistic directors have a bias against playwrights who are alive? Are they “Life-ist?” “Pulse-Phobic?” Do they hate my heartbeat?

Consider Richmond's orations to his soldiers in Richard III, Act V, Scenes 3 and 5, and how they bear a striking resemblance to presidential speeches delivered over the last thirteen years. Both Shakespeare's Richmond and our presidents use language to dehumanize the adversary while reinforcing camaraderie among those who are listening.

Our modern military and Shakespeare's plays are both infused with honor—a powerful tool in recruiting and building camaraderie. But what exactly is honor?

Questioning the meaning life, and contemplating an offer to go back into active duty military service, I hopped on an Amtrak and weaved my way around the western states. I jumped off in Montana and wandered into a theater. The house lights faded as a deformed man in a military uniform walked on stage.

I believe that here, Lady Percy describes the effects of combat on the veteran. I also believe that she shows, first-hand, the effects of war on the veteran's family. I find it awful that a monologue describing a rift between a combat veteran and his wife, which was written more than 400 years ago, is a rift that still exists today—throughout most of our society. This rift is a large part of what, I believe, prevents the reintegration of veterans back into society. But what is the rift between veteran and civilian?

In the modern military, weeks and weeks are spent tearing the "civilian" out of civilians-turned-recruits. Ripping out the thoughtful, compassionate, human response and replacing it with what I call the "labrador reflex."

Although written in the early 1600s in England and set in ancient Rome, Shakespeare's "Coriolanus" elucidates the difficulty of reintegration back into society for our veterans who've served multiple tours in heavy combat.

We as a nation, much like Shakespeare's plays, are brilliant at using camaraderie to: define masculinity, create and dehumanize an enemy, and to motivate our men and women towards violence. But after the “blast of war blows” in their ears, where is the blueprint for what to do after killing? Where are the speeches post-combat that teach men and women how to reconnect with their humanity?

Reading Henry VI, parts one, two and three, I was in awe. Aside from the usual chromosomal explosion that I always get from Shakespeare's verse, I was in awe because I realized that Margaret of Anjou was a berserker!

Srila Nayak reviews the American Repertory Theater’s production of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and highlights how the production uses music, color-consious-casting, spectacle, and stage-magic.

We usually consider a fight choreographer’s job to be staging the fights so that they are safe. Certainly safety is essential: actors should not be getting hurt in the exercise of their art. But a violence designer is far more than a mere “safety foreman.” Like any other artist working in the theater, the violence designer’s primary role is doing interpretive work: making choices that help tell the story. Not the story of Hamlet, but the story of this Hamlet: that is to say, the story that this production of Hamlet is telling.

Founder Rick Dildine tells the story of Shake38, a city-wide Shakespeare interpretation and performance festival.

When we do a talk back after our public performances of a Shakespearean play, there's a particular question that frequently comes up. This one question does a fair job of identifying the mission of EclecticPond Theatre Company (ETC). It's also the reason I signed on with the company shortly after it was formed in 2010. Invariably, this question comes from a well-meaning adult, and it always manages to surprise me that it has been asked again. “Do you really think that students can actually relate to anything in this play?”