British theatre director Peter Brook has been awarded the first International Ibsen Prize. The jury, headed by Norwegian actress and director Liv Ullmann, cited Brook for his, “Successful demonstration that all significant theatre has a unique ability to bring people together, that culture is something everyone can appreciate, and that no group or nation can claim ownership of a work of literature, either in the form of words or as performed on stage.”
The Stratford Shakespeare Festival has announced its 2009 season. Artistic Director Des McAnuff has selected four plays from the Elizabethan-Jacobean period, four other classics, and three contemporary Canadian plays, along with two musicals based on classical works.
Canada’s Stratford Shakespeare Festival is mixing Sondheim and Shakespeare for its 2009 season. The festival announced Tuesday that it will present two new productions of West Side Story and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum as part of its line-up next year. “These two musicals would not exist without William Shakespeare,” says Festival artistic director Des McAnuff.
A new production of Romeo and Juliet will bring Shakespeare back to London’s Middle Temple Hall as part of the 2008 Temple Festival. The festival is a year-long celebration to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the Temple’s Royal Charter. The hall is the site of the first recorded performance of Twelfth Night in 1602. Romeo and Juliet is being presented by Theatre of Memory and stars Juliet Rylance and Santiago Cabrera in the title roles. Rylance is the daughter of Mark Rylance, the former Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Cabrera is best known for his role as Isaac Mendez in the American TV series Heroes.
John Douglas Thompson and Merritt Janson in Shakespeare & Company’s production of Othello, Photo: Kevin Sprague
August 11, 2008
Although Shakespeare & Company of Lennox, Massachusetts was founded 31 years ago, the theatre’s current production of Othello markw the first time it has mounted a fully produced version of the play on its main stage. If the [...]
Director Lucy Bailey and designer William Dudley have partially transformed Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre for their new production of Timon of Athens. They’ve strung a rope net above the audience, from which bungee-cord assisted actors swoop down on stage like so many vultures. “My concept of Timon is to see this man-eating world in terms of carrion and their prey,” Bailey says. “I was very influenced by Hitchcock’s The Birds in this and I wanted to create this very frightening world of vultures.”
Stage and screen star F. Murray Abraham will be a guest speaker this Sunday, August 10 at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Stratford company member Geraint Wyn Davies will be interviewing Mr. Abraham in a discussion from the actors’ perspective. They will also take questions from the audience.
Playing Hamlet is usually a milestone in any actor’s career. But the bar was set unusually high for David Tennant in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s new production. The British media has been buzzing about the play for months. Tickets for the Stratford-upon-Avon run are sold out and tickets for the London performances in December are already selling for £500 a pair on EBay. But Tennant’s fans can rest easy. According to most British theatre critics, he’s a success and the play is getting warm if not perfect reviews.
Shakespearean scholar Marjorie Garber will give a lecture this Saturday, August 9 at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival as part of the International Master Directors’ Summit. Garber’s lecture is based on her most recent book, Profiling Shakespeare, which was released last March.
August 4, 2008
“Seven years after the closing of Fort Worth’s 25-year-old Shakespeare in the Park, a similar event will return next summer. A new happening called the Trinity Shakespeare Festival will be run and funded by Texas Christian University, where Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night will be performed in repertory indoors at two of [...]
