Tina Packer on the artistic process
Tina Packer is the founder and Artistic Director of Shakespeare & Company, the 30 year old theater in Lenox, MA. She is a celebrated actor and an admired educator. We were lucky to interview her in August, 2010. This segment, while not directly related to Shakespeare, is about the artistic process in general and the importance for all of us to keep ‘searching’ for meaning in our lives.
Read More...Anthony Heald as Shylock
Anthony Heald as Shylock
This year’s production of “Merchant of Venice” at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, directed by Bill Rauch and starring Anthony Heald as Shylock was a magnificent indictment on the cost of prejudice. Set both in contemporary and Elizabethan times, it rang true to today’s issues while still balancing the comedy and the tragic elements of this fine Shakespeare play.
Although it’s too late to see the play, you can still listen in as Heald deconstructs his speech as the famed character Shylock. He provides a rare window into the actor’s process.
Dmae Roberts produced this piece with music is by veteran OSF composer Todd Barton.
Read More...Ako in “Throne of Blood”
Back in the 1950s, Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa adapted the story of Macbeth into a film called “Throne of Blood.” This year, noted theatre director Ping Chong adapted “Throne of Blood” into a multimedia play for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
In this On Demand special, Dmae Roberts asked Ako about how she plays Lady Asaji, the role based on Lady Macbeth.
In this interview, Ako tells us how she handles this role with very few scenes and artful movement.
Music is by veteran OSF composer Todd Barton.
Ako
Hear Ako in this audio clip as Lady Asaji in “Throne of Blood”
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Ping Chong’s “Throne of Blood” is currently in performance at Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Read More...Shamah ShaRize, prisoner, Woodbourne Correctional Facility, New York State. On reading “Macbeth”.
This is an excerpt from an interview Steve Rowland of Shakespeare Is conducted with Shamah ShaRize. He is a prisoner at Woodbourne Correctional Facility, a medium security prison in the Catskill Mountains of NY State, about 2 hours north of NYC. ShaRize is a member of the play reading seminar there. The seminar is organized and hosted by “Rehabilitation Through the Arts” an amazing program that offers connection to the arts for prisoners in a number of NY State prisons. RTA is the vision of Katherine Vockins, its Founder and Executive Producer.
The lead instructor of this seminar is director Arin Arbus. Arbus works at NYC’s “Theater for A New Audience”. Her production of Othello, featuring actor John Douglas Thompson, received rave reviews in 2009. In 2011 the two will re-unite in a new production of Macbeth.
Steve Rowland was invited to visit the program in August – and is grateful to Katherine Vockins, Arin Arbus, the NY State Department of Correctional Services, the warden, the administration and the officers of Woodbourne CF, and the prisoners themselves.
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