3 ms·

What's next after Shakespeare is done?

jfengel 6y ago
We'll revisit many of the Shakespeare plays with new ideas. It's been a decade since we did Hamlet and even longer since Othello, for example. We just did a version of Romeo and Juliet with female leads, exploring issues around queer voices. I was about to direct A Midsummer Night's Dream, inspired by a combination of JRR Tolkien and Susanna Clarke -- the fairies as "fae folk". (Which required massive abuse of the script, but that's a lot of what keeps Shakespeare evergreen. At least I'm not writing in a happy ending for King Lear, the way the Victorians did.) We also explore other classics. Right now we're doing Revenger's Tragedy, another Jacobean play. We also had our sights on Twelve Angry Men, and even hoped to be able to convert it to a Zoom production during lockdown, though aggravatingly digital broadcast rights don't exist. (I suspect it has to do with the fact that it was originally a TV play.) In 2019 we actually didn't do any Shakespeare at all: Uncle Vanya, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and The Country Wife. So... plenty to keep us busy.
- googlryas 6y ago
  Have you ever considered the 100 Decameron stories, or the 24 Canterbury tales? No worries about digital broadcast rights there!
  - jfengel 6y ago
    Well, Two Noble Kinsmen is adapted from The Knight's Tale, which is itself adapted from Bocaccio (Theseid, rather than Decameron), so it covers all the bases ;-) Our play selection starts with directors, who submit a project that interests them (groomed into a season by the artistic director). I will sometimes nudge people towards certain projects: for some time I tried to get somebody to direct Love's Labors Lost (the next-to-last play we hadn't done) and Cymbelline. At some point I'd like to see if somebody will do Hamlet; it's been a long time. (We have a fondness for the obscurer Shakespeare plays; they give us a lot of opportunities for insight. Our Monty Python-inspired King John was a hoot -- and literally Shakespeare's own text.) We don't generally write plays ourselves, though our artistic director did her own translation of Lysistrata. If a director adapted Bocaccio or Chaucer, we'd definitely give it a look.

We'll revisit many of the Shakespeare plays with new ideas. It's been a decade since we did Hamlet and even longer since Othello, for example. We just did a version of Romeo and Juliet with female leads, exploring issues around queer voices. I was about to direct A Midsummer Night's Dream, inspired by a combination of JRR Tolkien and Susanna Clarke -- the fairies as "fae folk". (Which required massive abuse of the script, but that's a lot of what keeps Shakespeare evergreen. At least I'm not writing in a happy ending for King Lear, the way the Victorians did.) We also explore other classics. Right now we're doing Revenger's Tragedy, another Jacobean play. We also had our sights on Twelve Angry Men, and even hoped to be able to convert it to a Zoom production during lockdown, though aggravatingly digital broadcast rights don't exist. (I suspect it has to do with the fact that it was originally a TV play.) In 2019 we actually didn't do any Shakespeare at all: Uncle Vanya, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and The Country Wife. So... plenty to keep us busy.

googlryas 6y ago
Have you ever considered the 100 Decameron stories, or the 24 Canterbury tales? No worries about digital broadcast rights there!
- jfengel 6y ago
  Well, Two Noble Kinsmen is adapted from The Knight's Tale, which is itself adapted from Bocaccio (Theseid, rather than Decameron), so it covers all the bases ;-) Our play selection starts with directors, who submit a project that interests them (groomed into a season by the artistic director). I will sometimes nudge people towards certain projects: for some time I tried to get somebody to direct Love's Labors Lost (the next-to-last play we hadn't done) and Cymbelline. At some point I'd like to see if somebody will do Hamlet; it's been a long time. (We have a fondness for the obscurer Shakespeare plays; they give us a lot of opportunities for insight. Our Monty Python-inspired King John was a hoot -- and literally Shakespeare's own text.) We don't generally write plays ourselves, though our artistic director did her own translation of Lysistrata. If a director adapted Bocaccio or Chaucer, we'd definitely give it a look.