What will it be, and when can I hear it?
Coming in late 2011, offered free to over 700 public radio stations.
“Shakespeare Is” will be a 6 hour series, produced by Steve Rowland and Dmae Roberts. Between them, Rowland and Roberts have won 4 previous Peabody Awards. The series is now in production, with over 50 interviews completed, and more to come. It will be finished and released in late 2011, and offered free of charge to over 700 public radio stations in the US and to stations all over the world as well.
What will be in “Shakespeare Is“
In six one-hour shows, “Shakespeare Is“ will be a highly produced documentary series that includes interviews with Shakespearean scholars and Shakespearean practitioners, writers actors and directors. The purpose of the series is to introduce people of all ages to Shakespeare’s works – the plots, the characters and the language – to demystify these wonderful tales and help people connect with them and love them. We will see how Shakespeare lives on now, as our story-tellers will be people who are deeply passionate about Shakespeare — directors, actors, writers, scholars, theater people, film and TV people, politicians, prisoners, school teachers, and more.
The series will be based on extensive interviews conducted by Steve Rowland (and Dmae Roberts) – and also make use of monologues, dialogues, and short scenes from Shakespeare’s plays. It will include audio clips of great 20th century theater and film productions. In the style of our Peabody-award-winning series on Leonard Bernstein, “Shakespeare Is“ will use period documents: deeds, wills, real estate transactions, letters written by writers and scholars over the centuries – all read by actors – to help tell the story.
Why we’re telling this story
William Shakespeare’s influence on world culture – on literature, on film, theater, on psychology, ethics, even war – is stunning. No book or broadcast series can present even a fraction of the many ideas about Shakespeare.
“Shakespeare Is” will approach the subject in 3 distinct ways:
1) It is a contemporary oral history, with over 100 actors, writers, scholars and directors talking about ways Shakespeare has influenced contemporary story telling. The conversations will include discussions about acting, directing and writing. Not only for the theater – but writing for TV and films too.
2) Production of selected great scenes from the plays, using modern audio methods to create an “aural sense of place” – and compare them with great scenes of past productions, like the ones done for Mercury Radio Theater by Orson Welles.
3) A discussion of Shakespeare and his world – the theater of the time, the politics of the time, the writing of the time – and how, over the course of 400 years, generations of people have studied the texts, watched new productions, adapted the stories into contemporary fables.
While attention will be paid to Shakespeare’s time and place, the real focus is on us, and the here and now. What Shakespeare is. How has Shakespeare’s work set the stage for modern writers, playwrights and filmmakers? How does Shakespearean acting affect and influence our contemporary actors – and their approaches to other, contemporary, roles that they play?
Through the eyes of dozens of brilliant writers, directors, teachers and actors we will bring to public radio and the American people a contemporary story – seeing Shakespeare not so much as a voice from the past, but, though 400 years old, a voice so clear and so sharp, that it still gives us guidance, leadership and tools for sharing ideas and stories of the human condition.
