| Shakespeare church facing funding crisis | | Posted Friday, January 05, 2007 12:47:47 PM by Blog57 Team | | Stratford: The church where William Shakespeare worshipped and is buried needs up to a million pounds worth of repairs. A spokesman for Friends of Shakespeare's Church said funds were needed for repairs to the 13th-century Holy Trinity Church to stop it from crumbling. Dartmoor: Police have issued an alert after a wild boar confronted a dog walker and his pets on Dartmoor. The animal lunged at the two dogs when the man was walking near the Long Ash garden centre, at Buckland Monachorum. This article: http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=8712007 Last updated: 02-Jan-07 11:49 GMT .... | |
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| | | Open Shakespeare aims to free the Bard | | Posted Wednesday, November 15, 2006 6:47:31 AM by Blog57 Team | | Open Shakespeare is a UK-based project to publish a fully open edition of Shakespeare's works. It's not trying to be another "Shakespeare on the Web," just providing an HTMLized copy of the plays and works. Its goal is to produce a reusable package of free and open material, including the main source texts, encodings in various open formats including XML and PDF, ancillary material, a Python API, and other documentation and tools. .... | |
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| | | Professor's Lecture Links Shakespeare, Jazz | | Posted Sunday, November 05, 2006 6:47:55 PM by Blog57 Team | | Everyone knows William Shakespeare, renowned British 16th-century playwright. When thinking about his works, students can make typical comments about the language being difficult and often confusing. Not surprisingly, few associate his works with the turn-of-the-century jazz era in the United States. However, to explain the relationship between the seemingly unrelated topics, Professor Douglas Lanier from the University of New Hampshire was invited to the UConn on Thursday to read his paper entitled "Jazzing Up Shakespeare." Lanier illustrated how Shakespeare's influence can be seen in many examples of jazz music and theater and also how African American entertainers breathed new life into the stereotypically antiquated works of William Shakespeare. "To see how the two [jazz and Shakespeare] correlate was really fascinating," said Meghan Killoran, a 3rd-semester English and political science major.... | |
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| | | Royal Shakespeare Company performs 3 poetic plays at U-M | | Posted Friday, October 27, 2006 6:47:33 AM by Blog57 Team | | Funny how things come back into currency, the artistic director of England's Royal Shakespeare Company is saying. Take, for instance, the Bard's way of having his characters speak in poetic verse. "That's nothing alien to a whole generation of kids nowadays," explains Michael Boyd, who brings his celebrated troupe to Ann Arbor this week for an extended run of three plays. "My son at 17 knows volumes of rhyming verse -from hip-hop." And don't think for a minute that William Shakespeare, in turn, wouldn't have found a sympathetic vibe in hip-hop. Like Mozart, old Will drew from real life in the full measure of its breadth, width, height and, to be sure, its depth. The acreage of life that Shakespeare embraced is neatly cross-sectioned in the three works Boyd and the RSC offer in their third residency under the aegis of the University Musical Society - "Antony and Cleopatra," "Julius Caesar" and "The Tempest." Starring in the first and last of these is Patrick Stewart, whose household name may be rooted more deeply in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and the "X-Men" movies than in Shakespeare.... | |
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| | | The National Players Perform Shakespeare's Othello | | Posted Tuesday, October 17, 2006 10:55:47 PM by Blog57 Team | | The National Players came to Old Snell on Friday, October 13 to perform William Shakespeare's Othello. Pictured above are Iago (Adriano Gatto) and Cassio (Will Morris) discussing the events that have occurred since Cassio was dismissed by Othello from the army. The plot of Othello was that Iago disliked Othello because he was promoted to general and married Desdemona. Eventually, the plot thickens with the help of Roderigo and his wife, Emilia. Iago convinces Othello that his new bride, Desdemona, is having an affair with one of his officers, Cassio. Neither Cassio nor Desdemona are aware of this plot, and they are very confused when Othello confronts her about the affair. Othello goes mad with jealously and kills his wife by suffocating her with a pillow. Othello then commits suicide when he realizes that the affair between his bride and Cassio was made up by his supposed friend, Iago.... | |
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| | | THE DVD SHELF: Sada Thompson in "Family" and Rob Reiner's "The Princess Bride" | | Posted Sunday, October 08, 2006 6:47:55 PM by Blog57 Team | | This month's column discusses the Mike Nichols dramatic TV series "Family" and the new two-disc edition of Rob Reiner and William Goldman's "The Princess Bride." The career of Sada Thompson illustrates the difficulties faced by superb character actors in a marketplace that rewards youth and glamour. Thompson went professional in 1947, appearing in numerous stock productions in a wide-ranging variety of roles (Peg in Peg o' My Heart, Nina in The Seagull, Billie in Born Yesterday, Birdie in The Little Foxes all within two seasons). She seems to have worked constantly, and one can imagine that she was from the first an exceptional actress. But the closest she could come to Broadway were understudy jobs in 1953 (on a play that closed out-of-town) and 1955 (on a play that lasted three weeks).... | |
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| | | Theater calendar | | Posted Wednesday, October 04, 2006 12:47:58 PM by Blog57 Team | | A Midsummer Night's Dream, an outdoor production of Shakespeare's beloved romantic comedy. 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, Belmont Amphitheatre, located next to Belmont University bell tower, 460-6199. Through Sunday. Free Deathtrap A thriller by playwright Ira Levin, author of The Stepford Wives and other works of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Opens Tuesday. Shows Tuesdays-Saturdays, buffet 6 p.m., show 8 p.m., Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre, 8204 Highway 100, 226-2788. Through Saturday. $45 adults, $25 kids under 12 Over the River and Through the Woods A young man's decision about his future sparks an eruption of unsolicited advice, matchmaking, general meddling and unending food from his four Italian-American grandparents. Tuesday, buffet 6 p.m., show 8 p.m., Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre, 8204 Highway 100, 226-2788.... | |
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| | | Shakespeare Festival opens with Love's Labour's Lost' | | Posted Friday, September 29, 2006 2:47:42 PM by Blog57 Team | | Locals who love the works of William Shakespeare are likely familiar by now with the annual Shakes Fest sponsored by Grand Valley State University (GVSU,) but this year they may be surprised by the uniquely set performance of "Love's Labour's Lost." Organizers were in the midst of the selection process for this year's festival, when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005. Director Karen Libman was already considering this little known Shakespearean play for the main-stage production and immediately knew what she wanted to do. "Several things struck me," she said. "First the princess in the play was from France, and second there are masquerades and revelry of all kinds in the script. It just seemed like New Orleans was the perfect place." The GVSU version of "Love's Labour's Lost" has a touch of Creole and Cajun, but Libman said she steered away from making it completely modern day.... | |
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| | | OSF's 'Winter's Tale' becomes story well told | | Posted Tuesday, September 19, 2006 10:47:58 PM by Blog57 Team | | OREGON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL director Libby Appel has produced another wonderful interpretation of Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale" 16 years after she last directed it with Rex Rabold, who also played King Leontes. Unlike "Othello," the story begins once the acts born of overpowering jealousy have been played out. Shakespeare, in one of his later plays, is concerned with what happens after such tragic events ? the effect on people and their behavior, the possibility and power of redemption and the reality of things lost that cannot be reclaimed. The exceptional cast, with especially strong performances by the leads, tells the story with honesty, intensity, compassion and clarity. Small gestures and changes in expression (as well as the occasional outburst) from William Langan as Leontes show his quick descent into consuming jealousy and rage, as well as the long process of repentance and forgiveness that leads to (partial) redemption.... | |
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| | | Michael Cumpsty is Richard II at Classic Stage, Sept. 6-Oct. 15 | | Posted Wednesday, September 06, 2006 12:53:59 PM by Blog57 Team | | Richard II, the lesser-known "Richard" history by William Shakespeare, is brought to life by Classic Stage Company in New York City starting Sept. 6. Michael Cumpsty (of Broadway's Enchanted April, Copenhagen, Democracy, 42nd Street) stars as the royal who "wasted time" in the 1597 play. Part of the great "Henrys" cycle by the bard, the historical tragedy addresses issues of absolute power, and is rich with poetry. Performances play to Oct. 15. Opening is Sept. 17. This will mark the third Shakespearean collaboration between Cumpsty and director Brian Kulick, CSC's artistic director, after Timon of Athens for The Public Theater and CSC's Hamlet, for which Cumpsty received an Obie Award for his title performance. * The Richard II cast will include Jon DeVries as John of Gaunt, George Morfogen as the Duke of York, Graham Winton as Bolingbroke, Doan Ly as Queen Isabelle, David Greenspan as Bagit/Bishop, Jesse Pennington as Aumerle, Craig Baldwin as Northumberland, Ellen Parker as Duchess of York, and Bernarda De Paula as Bushy.... | |
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