Back to the Bard

For the past eighteen years, I have been directing plays. Most of the casts I have directed have been young theater artists, from ages four to nineteen. In the past several years, I have been working with teens and young adults. The favorite playwright of these theater troupes?

Shakespeare.

I am not surprised by this. Shakespeare has been my favorite playwright since I was eleven years old. While many who meet the Immortal Bard in high school lit classes may think of Shakespeare as difficult, boring and irrelevant, those of us who do Shakespeare—experience Shakespeare in production—find excitement, challenge and timely and timeless themes.

Shakespeare’s genius is above all theatrical genius. Shakespeare’s plays, in his own time, were great commercial successes. The plays brought in audiences and kept them coming back. Because of Shakespeare’s genius, audiences continue to be enchanted, challenged and touched by these plays. The young lovers of Midsummer Night’s Dream or of Romeo and Juliet, frustrated by parents and society, are easily recognized by young lovers of any era. Macbeth’s ambition—do the ends justify the means?—or Brutus’ struggle with divided loyalty—is my loyalty to my friend or to my country?—are as timely today as they were four hundred years ago.

Most people will agree that Shakespeare’s plays are some of the greatest in the English language. Many people will also agree that his texts are among the most challenging. Why should anyone attempt such difficult plays with young actors? For me, there are several answers to this question.

Young people deserve the best, and Shakespeare is the best. Any theatrical production requires many hours of practice, design work, set construction. Hundreds of hours are required to mount a production. In my opinion, these hours are better spent on a great script than a mediocre script. Working with one of Shakespeare’s classics, you know you have a script that can succeed – because it has succeeded with audiences for hundreds of years.

These scripts can succeed with young actors. While it is true that Shakespeare’s plays have a reputation for challenging both scholars and actors today, it is also true that many of the roles were written for adolescent apprentices, boys ranging in age from ten to seventeen or eighteen. The scripts are “playable”.

In producing and performing in one of Shakespeare’s plays, young people are learning by doing. It is obvious—and confirmed by numerous studies—that young people performing Shakespeare increase their vocabularies. The richness and quality of Shakespeare’s language not only enrich vocabulary but also encourage complexity of thought. Many studies also show that students engaged in drama improve academic performance in Language Arts and Humanities.

When my troupes have produced one of Shakespeare’s plays, we have learned much more than the lines of that particular script. We have set Shakespeare’s plays in different time periods. As a result, when working on Hamlet set in the Victorian era, we have learned not only about Elizabethan England, but also about the music and mores of Queen Victoria’s time. Setting Julius Caesar in Caesar’s Rome, we learned about costume, superstition and politics. Setting As You Like It in the 1920s, we learned about flappers, flivvers and dancing the Charleston.

Perhaps more important, although more difficult to measure, are the affective benefits of performing Shakespeare. I have seen the young people in my theater troupes grow and mature in many ways. They have grown in poise and self-expression. They have also increased their self-esteem, by undertaking a task that is acknowledged by all to be challenging and succeeding in that task. By working long hours on this task with a group all committed to the same goals, young people learn team work. They learn that the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts; that everyone is needed and makes a contribution. In addition, young people seeking to test their limits and find a thrilling challenge can find a positive venue for this in performing Shakespeare. Performing in front of an audience is a challenge, a thrill and excitement. Performing Shakespeare can be a positive way for young people to challenge themselves to excel.

the darkest hour

I'm THERE with this play. EVERY process of play production seems to have it: the point where it all is so horrible you can barely stand it.

The actors are struggling with lines.

As one costume problem is solved, another lighting problem arises.

There are key props that simply don't seem to exist.

And opening night seems just moments away.

This, I always tell my team, is just before it all comes together! Theater magic! Don't give up hope!

And this time, I am praying and telling this to myself as well!

serious as a heart attack

I have recently been reminded how everything in our lives effects our work as artists.

I am approaching the mid-point in directing Ghosts.

And, suddenly, I learn my mother is being rushed to the hospital. She is having a heart attack.

Drop everything and rush to the hospital. Cancel rehearsal that night and the next-- we had a 3 day break scheduled after that, so we could wait and see . . .

At the hospital, helping my mom fill out in take paperwork-- although do we call it paper work any more? It's all on the computer.

We are asked about her advanced directive, or living will, or durable power of attorney for health care? Which she has, and she tells me where to find it, and I go the next day and find it.

The first person listed as holding this durable power of attorney for health care is my mom's significant other, now deceased. The nurse asks me to cross out his name, write "deceased" and initial.

Which I do.

I am now the person named to hold the durable power of attorney for health care. I am the one to speak for my mother, to see that her wishes are known, if she cannot speak for herself.


The nurse takes the copy I have given her and adds it to my mother's chart.

A few minutes later, as my mom is trying to nap, the nurse asks me to come into the hall. I do. She draws my attention to the section on "DNR"- Do Not Resuscitate. Under certain conditions, it is my mother's wish is that no extreme measures be taken to extend her life. If her condition were to be one where there was no reasonable hope of recovery -- this is all carefully defined-- then, my mother's wish is that she be allowed to die.

The nurse says that there are specific papers that are usually drawn up in this case and added to the chart. She asks, should she draw up these papers?

I say, let me think a minute.

And I go and think.

I ask her to wait, please. My brother is in Oregon, stuck on a business trip. I don't want to complete the paper work while my brother is so far away.

Nothing is imminent. (In fact, the good news for this episode is that a week later, my mom is back home.) We can wait.

But I know, in future, this is quite possibly a decision I will have to face.

And, suddenly, Helen Alving's pain and wrenching decision at the end of Ghosts is a little less melodramatic. It is much more serious.

As serious as a heart attack.