We extend warm greetings to those who are new to the Guild, and immense
gratitude to those who've participated in our programs and contributed to
the success of our many initiatives.
Like millions of others, among them such luminaries as Nina
Totenberg, Linda
Greenhouse, and F. Murray
Abraham, we're commemorating the life and legacy of RUTH BADER GINSBURG.
Widely recognized for her love of opera, a devotion she shared with Justice
Antonin Scalia (her friend and ideological opposite on the United States
Supreme Court), "The Notorious RBG" was also dedicated to other forms of
artistic expression, a point that drama critic Peter Marks emphasized in
his eloquent tribute to her in the Washington Post. As Mr. Marks' charming observations
made clear, it was completely in character for Justice Ginsburg to grace
a May 2007 GIELGUD AWARD ceremony at the British
Embassy and extol director Michael
Kahn for all he'd done to establish the Shakespeare Theatre Company
as one of the most vibrant cultural institutions in America's capital city.
For details about that memorable occasion, scroll down to page 3 of the
June 2007 bulletin of ESU Washington,
and then proceed to the lead article in the Spring/Summer 2007 issue of
Shakespeare Newsletter.
In October of 2019 the Guild celebrated the 25th anniversaries of two
GIELGUD milestones (the establishment of an award in Sir John's
name, and the renaming of a venue that had been known as the Globe when
he performed there) with festivities in honor of producer Sir
Cameron Mackintosh that took place in a pair of historic settings: the
venerable Guildhall in the
City of London and the newly-refurbished Gielgud
Theatre in London's West End. Bestowing our trophy was director Sir
Richard Eyre, who'd been honored in Sir John's name the previous year.
While those GIELGUD events were being arranged in the UK, the Guild
was augmenting its popular SPEAKING
OF SHAKESPEARE offerings in Manhattan's Gramercy Park, with new
attractions such as Afternoon Salons at the National Arts Club
and an expanding roster of performance-focused engagements next door at
The Players.
Meanwhile in the Land of Enchantment, after several seasons of support for
productions at St. John's College and the Santa Fe Botanical Garden, the
Guild was broadening its scope through new liaisons with organizations such
as Journey Santa Fe,
the Lensic Performing
Arts Center (contributing "Great
Conversations" to its online programming), the Museum
of New Mexico Foundation, the New
Mexico Actors Lab, and Theatre
Santa Fe.
For detail about these and other endeavors, we encourage you to browse these
pages, clicking on the blue links that serve as navigation keys to an ever-expanding
array of enriching material. Among other things, you'll observe that we've
augmented our BACKGROUND
section to provide a variety of perspectives
on Shakespeare's world, work, and influence, many of them featuring unique
contributions by or about eminent actors, directors, producers, playwrights,
historians, critics, arts journalists, and other cultural leaders.
We'll be delighted if you wish to support our activities, either by enrolling
as a Guild member or by assisting
us with a special tax-exempt donation.
By design most of our offerings are admission-free; but of course that doesn't
mean they're cost-free. So any help you provide will be gratefully received
and promptly acknowledged.
ONLINE SPEAKING OF SHAKESPEARE PROGRAMS
Like other institutions, the Guild is now using digital formats for engagements
that would normally be presented in traditional gatherings. The most recent
of these, recorded September 13 in association with Santa Fe's Lensic Performing
Arts Center, was a conversation with Jim
Dale, a celebrated performer
who garnered an Oscar nomination as lyricist for the theme song in "Georgy
Girl," who won a Tony Award for his title role in "Barnum," and who holds
multiple Grammy Awards for his evocative recordings of "Harry Potter." Click
here
to enjoy the charming anecdotes he shared with Lensic executive director
Joel Aalberts and Guild president John Andrews about his brilliant career
as a singer, composer, actor, director, raconteur, and narrator.
Another memorable dialogue, recorded in late June by the National Arts Club
in Manhattan but held for realease until August 19, was a conversation
with Harvard's Stephen
Greenblatt. It commenced with a discussion of the prescient op-ed that
Professor Greenblatt published in the New
York Times a few weeks before America's 2016 presidential election.
It then focused on Tyrant, his 2018 volume about Shakespeare's
insights into how corrupt authoritarians seize and maintain power. From
there it proceeded to a broader consideration of the classical education
a budding playwright received in grammar school, and the ways in which it
equipped him to produce the resonant masterpieces that led a fellow dramatist,
Ben Jonson, to eulogize him in the 1623 First Folio as an artist who was
"not of an age, but for all time." For a vivid illustration of how Professor
Greenblatt's books and articles are influencing today's political discourse,
see a recent Times column by Maureen
Dowd.
On June 23 we arranged a special afternoon session with F.
Murray Abraham, a YouTube conversation that permitted the Guild to introduce
a charismatic actor who grew up in the Southwest to his many admirers at
Santa Fe's Lensic Performing Arts Center. A few weeks later, on August 12,
we enjoyed a delightful National Arts Club conversation with actor John
Douglas Thompson, who'd recently portrayed the Duke of York in the New
York Public Theater's WNYC
audio presentation of Richard
II. Now available on the NAC@Home
channel, this dialogue had been promoted by both Broadway
World and Thought
Gallery, and it drew to a close with pertinent questions from well-informed
viewers around the country.
Many of those participants had joined us May 26 for a riveting dialogue
with Columbia's James Shapiro.
That engaging
discussion had also been hosted by the NAC, and it provided an opportunity
for us to explore Shakespeare in a Divided America, the timely
subject of Professor Shapiro's most recent book.
As we recall the days before Covid-19 changed our lives, many of us are
now feeling nostalgic about evenings such as the one that occurred on February
26 at The Players (16 Gramercy Park South in Manhattan) with two of
America's most distinguished
visual artists, illustrators James
McMullan and Edward
Sorel. This exchange, which took place in the club's atmospheric Hampden-Booth
Library, was recorded by Ed's son, Leo
Sorel, and thanks to him and his colleague James
Salzano we're pleased to make it available here
for viewing.
Because of the Trumpidemic that followed
that special occasion, we've postponed several of our signature SOS
offerings. Yet to be rescheduled, either as programs with in-situ
audiences or as online offerings, are conversations with
Ron Rosenbaum (a prolific
journalist whose publications include The
Shakespeare Wars), with Shana
Farr (a gifted cabaret singer), and with Scott
Newstok (an esteemed scholar who's drawing upon "Lessons from a Renaissance
Education" to explain How to Think Like Shakespeare).
Shortly to be announced, meanwhile, is a new series of NAC@Home conversations,
to be presented during the next few months, that will feature recipients
of the Guild's prestigious GIELGUD AWARD, among them director Sir
Richard Eyre (2018) and actors Sir Derek Jacobi (1997), Sir Ian McKellen
(1996), and Sir Patrick Stewart (2008).
During the interim we encourage you to revisit a 2007 C-SPAN2 interview
with E. R. Braithwaite, the author who gave us To
Sir, With Love, a globally-renowned, best-selling 1959 memoir about
racial struggles in post-war London that provided Sidney Poitier with one
of his finest roles in an award-winning film whose theme song, recorded
by Lulu, was Billboard magazine's top single of 1967. For more
detail about Ambassador Braithwaite, who died in 2016 at the age of 104,
visit OTHER
OFFERINGS.
For information about previous highlights in the Guild's two decades of
SPEAKING engagements, not only at multiple venues in New York,
but at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater in the Windy City, at the New Mexico
Museum of Art in Santa Fe, and at such institutions as the British Embassy,
the National Press Club, the University Club, and the Woman's National Democratic
Club in Washington, click here.
THE GUILD'S 2019 GIELGUD AWARD CEREMONY IN LONDON
As noted above, our most recent Gielgud Award, presented on Monday,
October 28, 2019, paid tribute to the extraordinary achievements of Sir
Cameron Mackintosh. Once again our Award
festivities took place in conjunction with the UK
Theatre Awards Luncheon. And once again our Award selection
was featured in Broadway
World and The
Stage. As it happened, however, this celebration occurred, not
as usual in London's venerable Guildhall on Sunday, October 27, but at the
beautiful Gielgud
Theatre the following afternoon. As you'll see if you click on a brief
overview about the gathering,
it proved to be a memorable occasion, and one that paid tribute not only
to our 2019 Award recipient but to Clive
Francis, the actor and visual artist whose caricatures are among the
highlights of a venue that is now a shrine to the Gielgud legacy.
Fifteen years earlier, on April 19, 2004, the Guild had joined the RSC and
RADA in that resonant setting for a remarkable Gielgud
Centenary Gala. Our 2019 gathering vividly recalled that
occasion. But it also commemorated two anniversaries that date back a quarter
of a century: (a) the establishment of a new
award in Sir John's name, which was announced on April 24, 1994, at
the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, and (b) the renaming of a
venue
on Shaftesbury Avenue that had been known as the Globe prior to November
2, 1994, when it became the Gielgud Theatre in recognition of Sir John's
exemplary accomplishments, not least among them fifteen major productions
in that prestigious setting.
Bestowing our 2019 trophy was Sir
Richard Eyre, who was busy directing a revival of Mary Poppins
at London's Prince
Edward Theatre. In addition to his many achievements in the profession
for which he is best known, Sir Richard is a distinguished producer, filmmaker,
and author, and it was he who received our 2018
Gielgud Award at that year's UK Theatre Awards luncheon. Sir Richard's riveting television
production of King Lear, with Sir Anthony Hopkins in the title role, had debuted
a few weeks earlier on Amazon Prime Video. Meanwhile his evocative feature
film, The Children Act, starring Emma Thompson, Stanley Tucci,
and Fionn Whitehead in a screenplay by novelist Ian McEwan, was gripping
filmlovers around the globe. And if those credits were not enough, Sir Richard
was also directing
Laura Linney in My Name Is Lucy Barton, a "beautifully nuanced
solo performance" (to quote Michael Billington of The Guardian)
that would open on Broadway in January 2019.
Our 2018 award had been presented by Sir
Ian McKellen, the Guild's inaugural Gielgud laureate, who was
himself appearing in a West End staging of King Lear that had been
shared cinematically with audiences throughout the world. When he'd received
his own trophy, during a ceremony
at the Folger Shakespeare Library on May 20, 1996, Sir Ian had graced the
occasion not only with praise for Sir John, but with a powerful recitation
from The Booke of Sir Thomas Moore, relating the words that Shakespeare
had composed for the script's title
character to remarks that Justice Anthony Kennedy had uttered earlier
that day while he was delivering a pivotal Supreme Court ruling that "no
state may 'deem a class of persons a stranger to its laws.'"
As he bestowed the 2018 Gielgud trophy, Sir Ian recalled how much
Sir John did, not only to exemplify meticulous standards in his own presentations
of Shakespeare and other playwrights, but to encourage and support the efforts
of other performers, among them those who were just beginning their careers.
Sir Ian extolled Richard Eyre for the same qualities, and he emphasized
how much everyone who cherishes the dramatic arts has benefited from his
many contributions to our cultural lives.
In response, Sir Richard praised McKellen as "a wonderful actor and a very
good friend, and the natural artistic son of John Gielgud." And he amplified
Sir Ian's remarks about Sir John, observing that Gielgud's focus on building
strong repertory ensembles prepared the way for such extraordinary institutions
as the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. With this in
mind he noted, in an aside that was fervently applauded by an appreciative
UK Theatre audience, that he was "constantly bewildered by the fact that
local authorities and government can't see what an extraordinary, unique
asset" such treasures are, not only in London but throughout the United
Kingdom.
Media accounts of the festivities included stories in BBC
News, BT.com,
Irish
News, and York
Press. Click here
for visual highlights of a deeply moving occasion. And click here
for background on the Award.
GARDEN-FRESH SHAKESPEARE IN SANTA FE
During the summers of 2017 and 2018 the Guild co-hosted SHAKESPEARE
IN THE GARDEN, joining the Santa Fe Botanical Garden and Shakespeare
in Santa Fe on productions of The
Tempest in 2017 and A
Midsummer Night's Dream in 2018. During the summer of 2019 we collaborated
with Santa
Fe Classic Theater on a presentation of Romeo
and Juliet that ran from May 31 through June 9 and was glowingly
reviewed by the Santa
Fe Reporter. Once again tickets sold rapidly, and we were immensely
grateful for the Bardtenders
who joined us for another season of theatrical charm. For background on
the play, attendees were referred to a Routledge anthology of commentary
about what is often described as the world's most resonant love story. They
also enjoyed a KSFR
radio feature about the production, hosted by SFBG's Clayton Bass and
Lindsay Taylor and featuring director Patrick Briggs and Guild president
John Andrews.
As we put the finishing touches on our third presentation of SHAKESPEARE
IN THE GARDEN, we were still relishing what the Guild had co-produced
on Santa Fe's bustling Museum Hill in previous summers. For details about
a 2018 Dream show that was warmly welcomed, for example, click
here. And for background on
the presentation, see Jennifer Levin's article about "The Ecology of Shakespeare"
in Pasatiempo and listen to radio interviews in which the
Garden's Clayton Bass and the Guild's John Andrews talked with KSFR
host Lynn Cline. Also of interest might be a program that Peter
Lloyd hosted with musician Mary Springfels and Mr. Andrews on KSFR's
"Classical Sunday."
To encourage supporters to help sustain the work of a dramatist who was
still electrifying audiences in his 454th year, we established a Bardtenders
support group for SHAKESPEARE IN THE GARDEN. And we offered cultivation
events such as a TLC
dialogue that took place Tuesday, July 31st. This gathering, under the auspices
of Theatre Santa
Fe, followed a March 29th Food
for Thought dinner at La
Fonda on the Plaza and a May 29th benefit, Ever
the Twain, which took place at the Lensic
Performing Arts Center. Under the direction of Lois
Rudnick and Jonathan Richards, this revival of a fantasia
that enchanted attendees in January 2016 was enthusiastically received,
and those who arranged it were eager to revive it in other settings.
As we relished the highlights of our 2018 production of A Midsummer
Night's Dream, we were also savoring an SFBG rendering of The
Tempest that graced the Garden amphitheater in August 2017. More
than 1500 attendees applauded a show that featured superb acting, charming
music and special effects, and an exquisite set by designer Jay Bush. To
learn more about SHAKESPEARE
IN THE GARDEN 2017, read the informative background article by
Jennifer
Levin and a review by James
M. Keller in Pasatiempo, the Santa Fe New Mexican's
weekly cultural supplement.
This production was brilliantly directed by Nagle Jackson, who'd helped
artistic director Rachel Kelly preside over several seasons of Shakespeare
in Santa Fe between 1997 and 2002. Mr. Jackson had returned to La Tierra
Encantada in 2013 for a sprightly St. John's College medley that proved
to be a complete Delight,
indeed one that Mr. Keller described in Pasatiempo as that summer's
"most endearing revival." Our 2017 Tempest took place in a magic
circle that evoked such predecessors as the amphitheaters of Greek antiquity,
the "Wooden O" that Shakespeare evokes in his prologue to Henry V,
and the Zia Sun Symbol that adorns the New Mexico flag. Pulsating with reminders
that an aging playwright was scripting his valedictory drama at the same
time that a Spanish army was seeking to establish a "brave new world" on
terrain which had been occupied for centuries by earlier settlers, this
rendering of a classic score proved especially pertinent for audiences in
the Southwest.
For an overview about The Tempest, attendees were encouraged to
read the foreword that Sir
John Gielgud generously contributed to John Andrews' 1994 Everyman
Shakespeare edition of the play, as well as the Editor's
Introduction that followed it. They also enjoyed Ellen Berkovitch's
KSFR
radio feature about Shakespeare in the Garden, as well as conversations
with KVSF host Richard Eeds and KBAC host Honey Harris. In response to the
show, several wrote letters
that appeared in the New Nexican. And a few weeks after the production
concluded, Mr. Andrews offered some late-September "Reflections
on The Tempest" as part of a lecture
series that he'd inaugurated a quarter of a century earlier at Grand
Valley State University in Michigan.