Fairleigh Dickinson University will host its 16th annual Shakespeare Colloquium on Saturday, October 18 at the College at Florham campus in Madison, New Jersey. The topic for this daylong event will be “Shakespeare and Language.” The events are free and open to the public and discussions are encouraged.
David Tennant’s West End role in Hamlet sold out in a single day after Doctor Who fans sparked a ticket frenzy. Demand was so high that the official website crashed and tickets were soon exchanging hands on unofficial sites for more than £1,100 a pair. Booking opened Friday for the Royal Shakespeare Company production, which comes to London’s Novello Theatre in December after a sell-out run in Stratford-upon-Avon. The site crashed within minutes while fans jammed the telephone hotline, snapping up all 6,000 tickets by the end of the day.
American actor Josh Hartnett made his name in such movies as the Virgin Suicides, Black Hawk Down and Pearl Harbor. But Hartnett has left Hollywood behind for now to make his London West End debut in the stage version of Rain Man, based the Oscar-winning 1988 film starring Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman. Hartnett plays Cruise’s role of car dealer Charlie Babbitt. But before the curtain goes up, Harnett took some time to make a surprise guest appearance in The Factory’s production of Hamlet at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.
September 13, 2008
The Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Canada has announced a public celebration of the life of Richard Monette, the festival’s longest serving artistic director. The memorial service will be held, October 20 at 7 p.m. in the Stratford Festival Theatre.
Friends and relatives may also call at the W.G. Young Funeral Home, 430 Huron Street, [...]
Dana Gioia, two-term chairman of the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts, will leave the federal agency in January 2009. Gioia is credited with revitalizing the NEA after years of controversy, which threatened to topple the agency. Among the most important accomplishments of his tenure is the creation of the Shakespeare in American Communities program, which allows students across America to see live, professional productions of Shakespeare’s plays.
Shakespearean scholars David Bevington and Peter Holland will speak September 18 at the Purdue Shakespeare Symposium at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. David Bevington, Professor of Humanities at the University of Chicago, will present ‘As You Like It’ on Stage and in Film. Afterwards, Peter Holland, Professor in Shakespeare Studies at the University of Notre Dame, will speak on Passing Through: Shakespeare, Internet and Performance. The symposium, which is free and open to the public, will be held at 5 p.m. in the Krannert Building’s auditorium.
A number of rarely seen historic buildings associated with Shakespeare and his family will be open to the general public this weekend for Heritage Open Days. Heritage Open Days celebrates England’s architecture and culture by allowing visitors free access to significant properties that are not usually open, or would normally charge an entrance fee. The event, which takes place every year for four days in September, is coordinated by The Civic Trust and funded by English Heritage.
September 12, 2008
“David Starkey is to produce a four-part “psychological profile” of Henry VIII for Channel 4 [in the UK]. The as-yet-untitled series will go beyond the facts of Henry’s six wives and his split with the Catholic Church to piece together a sense of his character and motivations. The first 60-minute episode will show [...]
College students throughout the Unites States have the opportunity this fall to see some of the UK’s best Shakespearean actors in performance. Actors From The London Stage, an international touring theater troupe based at the University of Notre Dame, is taking its production of The Winter’s Tale to seven American universities between now and November. Actors From The London Stage is one of the oldest established touring Shakespeare theater companies in the world. The company was developed by Professor Homer Swander at the University of California-Santa Barbara and founded by the British actor, Patrick Stewart.
The Pacific Northwest Renaissance Society (PRNS) is accepting abstracts for individual papers and proposals for three-paper panels for its 2009 annual conference. The theme of the conference is “Performance of Place/ Place of Performance.” Suggested topics for paper and panel proposals include stage venues, textual locales, cartographic sites, travel narratives, social positions, religious rituals, and performed identities. The conference will held April 30 - May 2, 2009 in Bozeman, Montana at Montana State University.
