The Tempest: Shakespeare’s ‘first’ play – part 1
It is 1611.  You are sitting in the Blackfriars theatre, north of the river Thames, near the City walls.  It is a small hall space, very different from the large amphitheatres such as the Globe just across the river.  No need to worry about being rained on here.  You look around…as usual the audience have decided to come and show off the latest London fashion under the candlelight which lights the theatre: the auditorium shimmers and glitters with expensive materials and jewels.  Some of the wealthier women have used crushed pearl to paint their faces, as is the trend, and their skin glistens in the light.

The place is packed – every seat is filled and, unlike the Globe, there is no standing.  You have chosen one of the seats on stage – you don’t mind paying a little more to be close to the action!  Today the King’s Men perform a new play by their leading playwright, Shakespeare.  He’s written for the Blackfriars since 1609 when the company took over the venue: they use it for the winter and return to their longstanding home, the Globe, for the summer months.  But although Shakespeare has written other plays for this space, rumour has it that today’s play is the first to fully exploit the playing possibilities of the Blackfriars.  So you are looking forward to see what all the fuss is about.  The concert performed just before the play finishes – music works so well in this small indoor space, a whole range of instruments are played here that you just would not be able to hear at outdoor playhouses.  It is little wonder that so many playwrights like to use lots of music in their Blackfriars plays.  The sounds of the concert are still in your ears but, then, suddenly, rudely, this is disrupted – the loudest noise, thunder, lightning, you are in the midst of a storm….. The Tempest has begun

The Tempest: Shakespeare’s ‘first’ play – part 2
We often hear about The Tempest as Shakespeare’s last play – his goodbye to the stage, drowning books and breaking staff (the playwright’s pen).  Of course, this argument conveniently forgets that Shakespeare went on to write two more plays: Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen, both collaborations with John Fletcher.   For me, Shakespeare is contemplating ending and loss in The Tempest, perhaps the end of his career.  But I also think that he was able to embody his plays with more than one idea, to occupy multiple positions. One of Shakespeare’s preoccupations in The Tempest was how to adapt his writing to the performance conditions of the Blackfriars playhouse.   His company had performed at the Globe from 1599 but in 1609 things changed: they acquired the Blackfriars and began performing in this new venue during the winter.  The new playhouse was a small, candlelit hall, with very favourable acoustics for music.  Its audiences included London’s social elite, who paid a minimum admission price of six pence – this was the highest ticket price at the Globe.  And, for the first time in the history of English theatre, this was an audience who paid more to sit closer to the stage.

The Tempest awards these higher paying members of the audience with regular and detailed, visual effects.  The play opens with a dramatic storm scene in which the Mariners appear in ‘wet’ clothes.  Later on King Alonso and his lords are presented with a banquet by ‘strange shapes [who] dance about it with gentle actions of salutations’.  The banquet is a prelude to another eye-grabbing moment: Ariel’s surprise entrance, dressed as a harpy.  Next, the marriage contract between Miranda and Ferdinand is celebrated by Juno who ‘descends’ from above the stage, a ‘majestic vision’ which impresses bridegroom Ferdinand. Characters are frequently in awe of the visions before them, potentially a reflection of the first audience’s response to a play they had paid more to see close up.

Under the candlelight, the wealthy audience flaunted their best jewellery and clothing: contemporary accounts describe those who ‘glistered’ and ‘glittered’ at the Blackfriars.  The Tempest showcases an array of detailed and decorated costume and in this way Shakespeare enabled his actors to create an onstage visual display to match the auditorium. The play includes Prospero’s ‘magic garment’, the ‘fresh’ and ‘newly-dyed’ garments of the shipwrecked nobles and, of course, Ariel dressed as a ‘harpy’.  Later on in the play, Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo are tricked by the ‘glistening apparel’ Ariel brings on.  It is highly likely that these did indeed ‘glisten’ in the theatre’s candlelight, along with the other costumes in The Tempest, matching the impressive fashions of the Blackfriars audience.

As well as appealing to the eye, The Tempest makes the most of the acoustic environment of the Blackfriars.  For a playhouse which suited a wide range of instrumentation, Shakespeare wrote his most musical play.  There is only one ‘silent’ scene in The Tempest (3.1); in every other scene music or sound effects are part of the onstage action. Music underscores moments of magic such as when the banquet appears, or when Prospero promises to break his staff.  Ariel’s magical ‘tabor and pipe’ unnerve Stephano and Trinculo, causing Caliban to inform them: ‘[t]he isle is full of noises,/Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not’.  Shakespeare created an aural landscape for The Tempest’s island, making the most of the musical and sound effects possible indoors.

Some think of The Tempest as Shakespeare’s last play but, for me, it is a ‘first’ play – the first truly and specifically written for the environment of the Blackfriars.  After two years of the company’s residency at the indoor theatre, Shakespeare had developed a clear sense of what this playhouse demanded and in The Tempest he delivered just that.  Perhaps Shakespeare’s company also thought of The Tempest in terms of ‘firsts’.  Seven years after his death they chose to publish his collected works, known as the First Folio, and placed The Tempest as the first play in the collection.  In 1611, The Tempest really opened up a ‘brave new world’ of indoor performance for the King’s Men who performed at the Blackfriars until 1642.

Will’s World applies this concept to the world of William Shakespeare. Our project is designing, building and populating a Shakespeare Registry of metadata of digital resources relating to Shakespeare, covering anything from its work and live, to modern performance, interpretation or geographical and historical contextual information. The Royal Shakespeare Company is one the online resources contributing to Will’s World.

Development work to build the Registry has been on-going over the summer. We are now busy adding great data to the Shakespeare Registry and are keen to encourage some creative use of the data.  Following our successful participation in the Culture Hack Scotland event in April, we are currently considering the organisation of an online hack event.

This twist on the traditional in person 24 hours format provides a lot of flexibility. There is  no need to travel, no limits on number of participants or venue size, participants can schedule their participation around their other commitments and used their familiar setup.  Ensuring excellent communication will be key and the use of social media technologies will help us achieve this.

Do you think it is a good idea? Do you have previous experience of similar events to share? How can we support participants? Take part in our survey and tell us your opinions.

Feedback so far has been very supportive, see our post Can one desire too much of a good thing? We are now hoping to go ahead with organising this event in early December.  Put it in your diary and get in touch if you want to be involved!

Similar to a book club, the Literary Salon classes meet weekly in the virtual classroom for eight consecutive weeks to discuss a variety of texts. Students are presented with pre-class reading assignments and activities so that they are prepared for the weekly discussions.

Using the Carel Press Shorter Shakespeare Series version of both plays, and a variety of film sources to supplement the text, these young students gain an understanding and appreciation of the material, in a context where they can discuss with, and learn from their peers. Each class ran well over the one hour set limit as these enthusiastic and sophisticated students discussed the nuances of our tragic hero and his manic wife. They wanted to keep talking as they delved deeper and deeper into the Macbeths’ arrogance, madness, and death. They argued about the most effective way to portray fairies if they were directing ‘The Dream.’ They laughed at the 1909 silent movie version of ’A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, but thought that the Mechanicals depicted in this version were much better than those in the 1981 BBC’s version of the play.

The enthusiasm for this class continued well after the end of the course. The students wanted more! After much discussion with these opinionated young people, they decided to create a final project for inclusion on the ‘myShakespeare’ blog. Since these students hail from a variety of countries and states, they decided to create a visual representation that connects the play ’Macbeth’ with their home country. “It is a global project after all,’ they told me.  Some contributed videos and others photographs. You can see their results posted on the ‘myShakespeare’ blog, and I think you will agree that the enthusiasm both impressive and infectious.

The Dean, was impressed with the caliber of the discussion and the intensity of the on line learning experience.  Below you can see the students’ work.  The Literary salon classes are still a new addition to our department’s schedule of offerings and the next one;  ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is now online this autumn.

Lesley Stanford

Instructor at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California

Hunter’s project  http://youtu.be/TcfsbeLp-DQ

Sander’s project (above image)

Jim’s project -  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcuYnP5F4Gs

Daytona’s project - http://youtu.be/4vpbjdJs0AU

Ira’s project - http://youtu.be/bLixL4qnvMI

Peyton’s project (above image)

Having viewed a recent performance of Ben Power’s A Tender Thing, Gavin Ewan, a retired GP, reflects on the play’s impact and the memories evoked.

Sitting  alone, for this particular show, before the cyan tinted pillars and lintel as a backdrop and the bare boarded stage in the foreground – empty save two chairs, one fallen over,  and a mysterious beach– I was reminded of the previous summer trip to RSC Stratford where, accompanied by my wife, we saw Romeo and Juliet in Iraq. That booking had a nuance attached for I had remembered my wife studied Romeo and Juliet at A level and I secretly booked the tickets last winter as a surprise; but in my electronic haste omitted to realise the language was Arabic with subtitles. That only added to the novelty. How was a modern adaptation of the same classic story going to fit into the whole picture, especially with the ages of the players cranked well up?

The scene changes in A Tender Thing were breathtaking, utilising a simple white door separating front from rear stage and furthermore employing canvas flats that were lowered as appropriate for projection of patterns, waves, rain, the list goes on………….music and sound effects further tempted the senses of the eager audience. A sterile white bed foretold the death scene.

I had the doubtful advantage of having watched Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival thirty years ago, played out by two keen young thespians on a unique stage – from a motorcycle seat to sidecar – by the pavement on Princes Street (strangely the bike was a lurid aquamarine, rather like the pillars of the Swan last night). The two players, in turn, took all the many parts, and I recalled every Jones and Evans in their occupational contexts. And so here the Queen Mab speech is neatly used to highlight Juliet’s response to Romeo foretelling her death in his dream. Ben Power has mastered the transposition.

Richard McCabe as Romeo and Kathryn Hunter as Juliet are equally comfortable with puppy love and tragic separation, and they fill the bleak stage with joy, sometimes through words and phrases such as “ Love is too rough, too rude……” but more often using movement, or the lack of it, and dance. Ms Hunter would pass as an invisible extra in any respectable Neurologist’s clinic, underplaying her degenerative disease and the effect on her motor functions. Richard McCabe, dressed in his brown tweeds, shows bucket loads of compassion for his fast fading lover, and leaves us with the feeling that, after all, fostering a connection with a soul mate is one of the absolute needs and musts of human life.

For a student studying Shakespeare’s work, the importance of historical context is often emphasised. But what about the theatre audience? Settling down for an evening’s entertainment doesn’t exactly require advance study or contextual consideration.

This Valentine’s Day, my boyfriend bought tickets to see The Taming of the Shrew, expecting it to be a slightly old fashioned 10 Things I Hate About You. Little did he know, The Shrew bears only a passing resemblance to the American teen drama it inspired all those years later.

I was intrigued to see how the RSC would tackle such an infamous piece, and when it turned out to be a straight comedy I was surprised at how unsettling I found it to be. I’ve always considered the more challenging aspects of Shakespeare’s plays to be part of their fascination; what I wasn’t prepared for, was the idea that a modern audience might not find them challenging at all.

This production included the often-removed opening scene, in which the main narrative is set up as nothing more than idle amusement for an idiot drunk. Lisa Dillon played as fiery a Katharina as you could hope for, and yet there’s no avoiding the fact that she’s forced into marriage and subjected to a regime of psychological torture. And oh, how we laughed.

Petruchio’s treatment of Katharina has long been debated without resolution. Whether you consider it to be exaggerated farce or out-dated patriarchy, there are whole sections of The Shrew that should make for very uncomfortable viewing. Shouldn’t they?

I began to wonder if it was me that was being unreasonable. There’s no denying I’d come out with a certain set of expectations, so it’s fair to assume that others would have too. Anyone who had come to see the 10 Things origin-story would have been predisposed to find humour, and that was exactly what was delivered. So who am I to decide that they’re wrong to laugh?

We might like to think our outlook has evolved since Elizabeth’s day, but the truth is they weren’t exactly ok with the concept of spousal abuse back then either. Maybe the real difference is that I lean so readily towards deconstruction and pigeon holing that I’m simply more inclined to find offence where none was intended.

I don’t think I’ll ever find it easy to watch The Taming of the Shrew, but being confronted by such an unexpected reaction made me revaluate the play all over again. If nothing else it made me realise how easy it is to get settled in an opinion, and I’ve resolved to try and be more open minded in the future.

After all, there are so many people reading Shakespeare’s work around the world that we’re bound to come up with a few different takes on it between us. That’s what keeps it interesting, right?

Wokingham Theatre is an Amateur company putting on 8 varied shows a year. This blog is about the rehearsals for their production of Hamlet.

With four weeks left till first night, the cast have broadly understood the text, established their characters and learnt most of their lines. Now we have some time to dig deeper. Our production has focused around Hamlet’s question “Am I a coward?”. Earlier this month we looked cowardice in Hamlet’s relationship with Rosencrantz & Guildenstern. In 2.2 we discovered that Hamlet writes his relationship off with R&G very early, not because they have been sent for – he seems to forgive them for that as soon as it is admitted – rather for what happens next: the short exchange over “What a piece of work is man…”. We tried playing it as a rather pretentious student conversation, then as an accusation against R&G for not being more honourable and open about why they had come, until finally we hit on playing it as Hamlet seeking solace. When Rosencrantz fails to empathise, offering only the rather shallow diversion of the Players, our Hamlet walks away, unable to tell them what is on his mind.

In rehearsal we jumped from that scene to the beginning of 5.1. Hamlet recounts how he has sent R&G to their death. We have decided that this decision, which of course happens off stage, is perhaps the first attempt Hamlet makes to take control. We explored how his words and attitude are different in Act 5. So at the start of 5.2 our Hamlet deliberately chooses to sit on the King’s throne, and his cold, factual account of sending Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths doesn’t seem that of a coward at all.

Last night we looked at how prepared Hamlet was to die. Our Hamlet is definitely thinking of suicide at the start of ‘To be or not to be’, but is he a coward now? We need to work out how to play the last moments before the duel “if it be now tis not to come…” Shall we see a Prince facing the possibility of death with equanimity not cowardice; or maybe just a young man completely terrified of death but going to fight anyway; or perhaps a revengeful son who does not believe he will die, determined to bring justice to an Uncle; or… We have not found an answer that works yet – fortunately we have a still have enough rehearsal time to find one.

Hedda Bird – director for Hamlet, and also Artistic Director of Wokingham Theatre.
Hamlet runs October 18th – 27th 2012 www.wokinghamtheatre.org.uk

The Brazilian theatre group Cia Elevador de Teatro Panorâmico was founded in 2000 by their artistic director Marcelo Lazzaratto. Ten years later the group undertook the translation and performance of As You Like It. The following is taken from an interview given on 21 June 2011 when their translation was completed and the show was playing at the company’s theatre. The interview appears as transcribed in the book of their translation, published by Balão Editorial. At the interview was Marcelo Lazzaratto (actor and director), and the actors Carolina Fabri, Gabriel Miziara and Pedro Haddad                                                                                                                                               

                                                                     
How did the translation process begin?
ML: ‘…as a study and research process. I believe that the difference between a theatre group like ours and a more commercial one is exactly this: we take some time. In a commercial staging, the cast is picked up, the play is rehearsed and right after it goes to stage: our time runs in a different pace. We had the time to complete this process.’

How long did it take it to finish it?
M.L.: ‘The whole process took about a year, but I believe we’ve spent 8 months working specifically with the text.’
C.F.: ‘…it was all done by us.’

Were any of you translators before this experience?
M.L.: ‘Not with theatre. Everyone had experiences with translating, but not a whole play.’
G.M.: ‘For the play Ponto Zero [Ground zero], we translated a few things. For example, we took La Chinoise, by Godard, which didn’t have a Portuguese translation, and transcribed the film, and later translated it.’

And what was the biggest difference, and which new difficulties arrived, when translating as a group?
M.L.: ‘This material came to the group that debated everything, line by line… It wasn’t easy! We had to deal with everything: choices, moods, and visions. ‘
C.F.: ‘We discussed every line, every comma. So, by the time we had to memorize, it felt really organic.’

Do you have a different relationship with this work?
G.M.: ‘Yeah, and during the process of studying it, we took different versions of it, translated by others, and experimented with those characters.’
M.L.: ‘Translating is making options. Obviously. But they’re not easy to make, because one sentence leads to different paths, according to the option of a synonym done before, that means, in reality, the same thing, but that in the next sentence, or in the next reply, is more or less adequate and offers another path of senses. This new path determines things outside the sentence, for example, even the characterization of a character.’

Do you believe that your translation has a tendency to have a longer life in the market?
M.L.: ‘I believe so, because Shakespeare is there. We didn’t mess with him, didn’t try to transform him. We only made culture adaptations that were completely pertinent.’
C.F.: ‘Because the original one didn’t make any sense in our time and culture.’
M.L.: ‘Maybe it would be something that Shakespeare would write if he lived nowadays.’

Still in this subject of doubles: almost every actor plays two or more characters in your production. Do you think that Shakespeare aimed this as he wrote?
M.L.: ‘Yes, some cases are famous. It is almost certain that the actor that played Cordelia in King Lear also performed the Fool…. That’s the beauty in Shakespeare. Pure theatre: the actor is something one minute, and a whole different thing the other.’
C.F.: ‘And gains us over.’

It’s a shame that this transformation of a character into another is not perceptible in the text, because it is very moving to the audience…
C.F.: ‘But the text is a work of art meant to become another: the staging. This is our version, but another company can discover another aspect.’

During the translation, the staging was always on your mind?
C.F.: ‘I guess that’s inevitable, because everyone in the translation group, from the beginning, are actors. So, being actors translating a theatre play, it is almost impossible not to think about the staging.’
P.H.: ‘Even if it is just picturing yourself saying that line on scene.’
M.L.: ‘We didn’t necessarily think about the staging, but in the enacting.’

Are you satisfied with the results?
Everyone: ‘Yes!’
M.L.: ‘When I compare our translation with the others, I think ours is indeed really good. It has fluency, it’s intelligible, not simplistic. It’s not a simplified version.’

Would you repeat this translation experience with another text?
M.L.: ‘Definitely!’
C.F.: ‘It makes us feel that’s the best way to go.’

Talking about the text, which of the characters was the most difficult to translate?
C.F.: ‘The Fool! … There is this long part where he talks about the seven causes of quarrel, with specific names to each one. That was… hard.’

With so much, how long does the performance takes?
C.F.: I believe that about 3 hours. This Fool’s scene, for example, has to be long, so that Rosalind has the time to change. He gains time for the other actor – genius.

One last question to wrap it up: what’s the feeling of seeing your text, your translation, to which you’ve dedicated so much work and time, being published?
P.H.: ‘It’s the feeling that our work we’ll reach farther, democratizing our research, our artistic discoveries. What before was only divulged on the stage, will be able now to reach new audiences and serves as creative material for others.’

For more information about Cia Elevador de Teatro Panorâmico visit:
www.elevadorpanoramico.com.br/

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The thing that struck me about this incident is how Harvey was unafraid to confront the actions of the protestors. He rolled up his sleeves and scrubbed his painting, which, given that Saatchi deemed it worthy to feature in his exhibition is quite a feat. Harvey wasn’t precious, he rose to the challenge, even if that meant potentially damaging the work he had poured hours over.As part of the World Stages London festival, playwright Simon Stephens collaborated with director Sebastian Nübling and designer Ene-Liis Sempe to stage Three Kingdoms. Here in the UK it is often considered that theatre is given over to the playwright as the lead, but in Germany the director rules. Stephens’s may have written Three Kingdoms but that didn’t mean Nübling treated it as a finished product. The director went into rehearsals and drastically cut, rewrote and added lines, without the assistance of Stephens. Of course the playwright respected Nübling enough to trust his artistic vision, but how many playwrights would be willing to let go?

Preciousness is something that I believe dogs our theatres. It starts before an audience sees the work, and it seeps out of the closed doors of rehearsal rooms. The process of making a theatre piece is very much a secret process, with artistic directors, writers and devisers camped in their rehearsal rooms creating the work to amuse the brick walls around them. I’m being harsh of course, the process of any artistic practice needs to question the fragile nature of experimenting, failure and indeed keeping something precious, but we must be careful to not become those art restorers, resolved to meticulously piecing work back together.

So what does any of this have to do with Shakespeare?

Preciousness of text is something that the words of Shakespeare seems to, at times, live upon. There is still an inherent protectiveness that seems to surround the work of Shakespeare when it is performed. Where a production seeks to replicate the conditions of Shakespearian times we have the historians huffing and puffing, whilst an adaption causes more than a sceptical eye by purists of the Bards’ work. I wonder if Shakespeare would have objected to such preciousness of his work?

The problem with preciousness is how easy it becomes being cautious, and being cautious can lead to stifling of new ideas and stagnation. We’re all in agreement that the works of Shakespeare are what they are, a masterful body of work, but that doesn’t mean we should keep them on a mantle and protect them from dissemination. In an age where we are hyper-connected and information is passed between users in a click of a button we’re seeing an increase in the Creative Commons Licence. This predominant digital licence allows creative content to be licensed for distribution, editing and copying within the limits of copyright. It encourages enhancement, sharing and the shake up of the original content, which a normal copyright licence doesn’t. It doesn’t allow for preciousness, it often encourages a bit of creative chaos.

As Shakespeare is a little past his copyright date his work is readily available in the public domain, so perhaps it’s about time we apply more of the Creative Commons approach to his work. Let’s do away with preciousness and find new ways to shake up his work. If contemporary playwrights such as Stephens can give up creative control on his work for it to be excelled, we need as an audience to encourage creative’s to do the same with Shakespeare’s words otherwise we risk stifling his words altogether. Holding such devotion to Shakespeare is like that of the art restorer, dedicated hours of meretricious time and commitment to reproducing the same precious product. Is that what Shakespeare needs? I think not.

The 2012 Olympic Games have been a fantastic success which it’s hoped will change the perception of sport in the UK and increase participation at all levels. But what will be the legacy of that part of the Cultural Olympiad, the World Shakespeare Festival? Will we see a change in the way Shakespeare is perceived, and might it lead to audiences feeling more involved?In 1592 Thomas Nashe visited the theatre to see the play we now call Henry VI Part 1. Instead of describing the play, he chose to record the emotional effect one scene had on the audience. He wrote that the onstage death of the great military hero Talbot provoked “the teares of ten thousand spectators…who…imagine they behold him fresh bleeding”.

Without audience members like Nashe we would know almost nothing about contemporary performances of Shakespeare’s plays. Thomas Platter, a visitor from Switzerland, described a production of Julius Caesar, Simon Forman wrote about several plays he saw, and Henry Peacham added a sketch of one of the scenes to a page of handwritten quotations from Titus Andronicus. Shakespeare’s ability to write scenes remembered by audiences ensured that his plays would carry on being performed as well as read.

In the twenty-first century, theatre audiences are still important. Actors often talk about how much audiences vary from performance to performance, and author Iain Mackintosh even suggests “the performer is rendered impotent unless he or she receives …a charge from the audience”.

So why do we so rarely hear from the audience? Helen Freshwater notes that academics “prefer discussing their own responses, or relaying the opinions of reviewers, [rather than] asking “ordinary” theatre-goers… what they make of a performance”, and it’s true that professional critics and academics are normally the only people whose opinions we read.

When Gordon Crosse published his notebooks covering fifty years of theatregoing, 1890-1940, a reviewer called them “a little landmark in the history of his subject”, but his lead has rarely been followed. Professionals are left to assume the role of audience spokesperson, yet we all know how much post-show disagreement there can be among any group of friends, families or colleagues.

Theatre, especially Shakespeare, is an expression of our collective identity, important enough for many libraries and archives to collect the remains of productions. For many years I cared for one of the most comprehensive, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Archives at the Shakespeare Centre Library and Archive in Stratford-upon-Avon. I often met ordinary theatregoers who remembered productions they had seen years or even decades before. Something as simple as a cast-list or photograph could release a flood of memories, and it was clear that those performances had been special moments in that person’s life.

Performance is notoriously difficult to preserve. Researchers examine every remaining scrap of information: the prompt book, photographs, sound recording, video, programme, rehearsal notes, set and costume designs and score, but can’t capture how it actually felt to be there. Written descriptions can help. But for productions within living memory there is another way. We could record the voices of people talking about their memories, perhaps of specific moments, or maybe like Thomas Nashe, they might just remember how it made the audience weep. And let’s hear what audiences have made of movements like Director’s Shakespeare, Experimental Shakespeare and Original-Practices Shakespeare.

Memory is subjective and imprecise, but so is theatre. Oral History has become a legitimate tool for researching all kinds of subjects through the memories of individuals. I’m interested in finding ways of interviewing people about their memories of Shakespeare on stage in order to create an archive of recordings that can be made freely available. My particular interest is RSC productions, but potentially recordings could be made anywhere Shakespeare is performed or studied, and people could even record their memories remotely. Technology now allows us to share material on social networking sites like Facebook and YouTube, or to embed recordings in blogs, and I’m currently exploring some of these options.

If you’d like to find out more, or are interested in joining me in this project, please visit The Shakespeare blog, www.theshakespeareblog.com where I’ll be posting in the section Listening to the Audience. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

SHAKESPEARE’S SEASONS is an illustrated children’s book created by me and my  collaborator (and friend), Shannon Whitt. It was inspired by reading to my two-year-old son, Abel. Discovering the rhymes and poetry of Mother Goose and Dr. Seuss and the sound and silliness of the words was a joyful experience for him. He was intrigued by the idea that specific words describe specific things: Nape–it’s not just a neck,  it’s the back of a neck.Because things were going so well with the poetry and because I’m a theatre director and a literary manager at Vineyard Theatre in New York City, I thought it would be fun to share  Shakespeare’s rhymes and verse with Abel. But secretly, I’m a Shakespeare wimp. Everyone knows Shakespeare is a great writer! (But I can’t understand him.) Maybe reading Shakespeare to my boy would school me too.

Reading Abel Romeo and Juliet or King John didn’t make sense–neither one of us would appreciate it. I’d seen books that paired great works of art with gentle rhyming verses. So we set out to find the same idea for great works of literature. We headed to the bookstore. Then the library, independent bookstores, online. Nothing. Though the idea seemed too obvious to not exist, most agents and publishers didn’t believe that parents and young children would want such a book. One agent even said he didn’t think exposing young kids to Shakespeare was “in anyway necessary”.

That’s when I started to realize how necessary it really is. Like learning any language, early exposure to Shakespeare makes you more fluent. Like Shakespeare, we push our language to mold and fit us regardless of the times we live in or our respective ages. There is something spectacular about teaching a child a word that so deliciously fits a specific set of circumstances. After knowing it, everything else falls short: Bareness to describe trees in the winter or foison plenty to describe the farmers’ markets bursting with the year’s harvest. Shakespeare or not, kids get it.

The delightful surprise of the book is that adults get it too. This is full-on, unadulatered Shakespearian text. It’s an authentic experience of his verse in small doses. Abel is five now and he’s starting to discover what makes Shakespeare’s words so endurable and timeless. So am I.