August 19, 2008
Professor Ann Thompson, Head of the School of Humanities at King’s College London and a general editor for the Arden Shakespeare, will present the 2008 Julia Briggs Memorial Lecture. The lecture, entitled Staging Shakespeare’s Plays at the Globe: Then and Now, will be given 6 September at King’s College London.
Most recently, Thompson edited [...]
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.”
This summer, The Boston Public Library, in partnership with the University of Massachusetts Boston, is presenting “All the World’s a Page: 400 Years of Shakespeare in Print,” an exhibition that explores the importance of books to the creation and transmission of Shakespeare’s works. The exhibition examines how our understanding and appreciation of Shakespeare is largely dependent on books in which his works have been published, edited, altered, annotated, translated, and illustrated in the centuries since his death.
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.
The Royal Shakespeare Company is once again opening its doors to the public for its annual Open Day in Stratford-upon-Avon. Open Day is designed to give visitors a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to bring a production to life. The open house will feature talks and hands-on sessions about costumes, lighting and sound, make-up, wigs, armory and stage fighting. One of the highlights of the day will be a talk by the stars of the RSC’s sold out production of Hamlet, Oliver Ford Davies, Patrick Stewart and David Tennant
The Shakespeare Post is proud to introduce Lend Me Your Ears, a new podcast series created exclusively for the Post. Lend Me Your Ears will feature interviews with actors, directors, scholars, historians, educators and anyone else making news in the world of Shakespearean performance and research. For the inaugural podcast, Jo Lyon, senior archaeologist for the Museum of London Archaeology, discusses the discovery of The Theatre in London. Lyon led the team that unearthed the foundations of the playhouse earlier this summer.
August 14, 2008
“Stratford-upon-Avon, the Warwickshire birthplace of William Shakespeare, has suffered a difficult time in recent years. Foot-and-mouth disease, the slowdown in US tourists after 9/11, flooding and building work at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s main theatre have all led to fears of doom and gloom for the town’s tourist industry…since the opening [...]
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.
Globe Education at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London will host a major conference this October to mark the 400th anniversary of the re-acquisition of the Blackfriars Playhouse by Shakespeare’s theatre company, The King’s men. The event is being organized in partnership with the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Virginia. The center is home to a full-scale, working replica of the Blackfriars Theatre. The conference, titled Outside In / Inside Out: Shakespeare, the Globe and the Blackfriars, will bring together Shakespearean scholars and theatre practitioners to consider plays that were written for outdoors theatres that transferred to indoor theatres and vice versa.
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.
