Shakespeare American Style

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival simply rocks. Read about their new American history project, inspired by who else? Shakespeare!

The United States History Cycle. Shortly before he took over in 2007, the festival’s artistic director, Bill Rauch, announced a 10-year plan to commission 37 new plays — a nod to the number in Shakespeare’s canon — about critical moments in American history. Up to 15 will get full productions at the festival; others, it is hoped, will be produced elsewhere.

In an interview Mr. Rauch said he was inspired by the role that Shakespeare, through his history plays, filled in helping his fellow citizens confront the major political questions of their day. “He lived in an age of anxiety about who would replace the childless monarch Elizabeth,” Mr. Rauch said. “He dramatized stories from his country’s past to study the transfer of power and to entertain and move and provoke people, and that got me thinking about our own country’s

history.”

The Bard, Black Bras and Black Top

A review of the Drilling Company's production of Julius Caesar, performed in a parking lot.

And in Los Angeles, a 1970's punk rock version of The Taming of the Shrew presented by the Actor's Gang.

Sweaty Shakespeare

Must be a dry time for arts stories. Both the NY Times and the LA Times discuss outdoor performance and watching Shakespeare in the heat. But only the LA Times gets a quote from Joan Rivers:

Joan Rivers, who was at the performance with her daughter, Melissa, later told the New York Post, “I would sit in an oven for Al Pacino.”

Making Shakespeare Current

A NY Times rave review Shakespeare in the Park's Merchant of Venice with Al Pacino:

For as this Shylock rants — and the lines between wrathful avarice and paternal anguish blur beyond reckoning — his state of confusion becomes a heightened mirror of everything around him. As the lights dim on Shylock in limbo, it suddenly hits you that Shakespeare’s vengeance-addled Jew is neither merely the victim nor the villain of this piece; he is instead the very soul of the money-drunk society he serves and despises.

Shakespeare's Inner Girl

Tina Packer, Founder and former Artistic Director of Shakespeare and Company takes on the women of Shakespeare in "Women of Will", a tour of Shakespeare's females characters. From the NY Times:

It is her thesis that as Shakespeare developed as a playwright, his women increasingly became his artistic alter egos, marginalized figures who stood to the side of the power makers, observing and interpreting.