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.
Intelligent Allah on the benefits of “RTA”
Intelligent Allah discusses the benefits of “Rehabilitation Through the Arts” and studying Shakespeare in Prison.
Jecoina Vinson on studying Shakespeare in Prison
prisoner Jecoina Vinson at the Woodbourne Correctional Facility, New York State
Shakespeare Is Interview Excerpts, November, 2011
Interview excerpts include: Actor, John Douglas Thompson / 6th Grade Teacher, Susan Patella / Folger Library Director, Michael Witmore / Poet, Robert Pinsky / Prisoner, Marvin Bey Lewis / Ex-Prisoner, Shahmah Sharize
9 minute demo – “Shakespeare and Social Justice”
This 9 minute radio demo was prepared for a recent grant application. This excerpt presents our conception of Shakespeare as works that are for everyone – for all of us. The works themselves and the wonderful people who present them, stimulate discussions about race, class, gender, equality, power, love and many other important issues. Please let us know your reaction.
Sharize Terrell, prisoner, Woodbourne Correctional Facility, New York State. On reading “Macbeth”.
This is an excerpt from an interview Steve Rowland of Shakespeare Is conducted with Sharize Terrell. 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. Terrell 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.
OSF-75 Years In The Making
Dmae Roberts produced a feature story on Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s 75th Anniversary Season that aired on NPR. This is an audio slideshow to accompany the radio feature story. Produced and narrated by Roberts, this five minute slideshow and radio story was created with photographs by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival who own all copyright to all the photographs.
Photo Credit: David Cooper, OSF
For more info, visit OSFAshland.org.
Alabama
This is a section of Steve Rowland’s radio documentary “Tell Me How Long Trane’s Been Gone”. Produced/directed by Rowland, written by Larry Abrams and narrated by Michael S. Harper. The composition “Alabama” was released in 1963 shortly after the horrific murder of 4 Little Girls in a church in Birmingham, AL. Some jazz writers have claimed that the tune is NOT about these 4 girls. We disagree and think this shows that Coltrane might have memorized parts of Martin Luther King’s moving eulogy and based his composition on the words. See what you think!