THE GUILD'S 2019 GIELGUD AWARD CEREMONY IN LONDON
We're delighted to announce that our 2019 Gielgud Award will be presented to Sir Cameron Mackintosh. Bestowing the trophy will be last year's award recipient, Sir Richard Eyre, who is now directing a revival of Mary Poppins that will open shortly at London's Prince Edward Theatre. Once again our festivities will take place in conjunction with the UK Theatre Awards Luncheon. But this month's presentation will occur, not at the historic Guildhall on Sunday, October 27, but at the Gielgud Theatre on Monday, October 28.
On April 19, 2004, the Guild joined the RSC and RADA in that beautiful setting for a memorable Gielgud Centenary Gala. This year's gathering will recall that occasion, but it will also commemorate 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 storied venue on Shaftesbury Avenue, which had been known as the Globe prior to November 2, 1994, when it became the Gielgud Theatre in recognition of Sir John.
ANOTHER ENGAGING SEASON IN NEW YORK
We launched our 2019-20 Speaking of Shakespeare series with Adam Gopnik of The New Yorker on Monday evening, September 30, at The Players (16 Gramercy Park South in Manhattan). Our primary focus was Adam's new book, A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism, a brilliant analysis of contemporary politics that David Brooks had commended in a recent column for the New York Times. But as usual we also explored a wide range of other topics, among them the insights a sensitive scrutiny of Shakespeare brings to the social and political challenges we're currently experiencing.
Other engagements will be announced in the near future, among them a conversation with Washington Post drama critic Peter Marks, who is now supplementing his normal reviewing with theatrical perspectives on the campaigns of today's leading candidates for the 2020 presidential election. In recent weeks Peter has focused on the way audiences are responding to figures such as Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, and Elizabeth Warren.
Meanwhile, we continue to relish the spring events that concluded our 2018-19 season. One was a special afternoon salon with Linda Zagaria in Manhattan's National Arts Club on Tuesday, June 25. Another, a program next door that evening at The Players, was an entertaining dialogue with New Yorker favorites Roz Chast and Patricia Marx. They discussed and signed copies of their illustrated guide to the care and tending of hard-to-please mothers, Why Don't You Write My Eulogy Now So I Can Correct It?, and charmed us with ukulele duets similar to those that had captivated audiences a few nights earlier at the legendary Carlyle Hotel.
We're also savoring two mid-May events in a SPEAKING OF SHAKESPEARE series that is now in its third decade. One was a memorable conversation with F. Murray Abraham, who joined us for an 8 p.m. National Arts Club gathering on Monday, May 13. Best known for the Academy Award he earned as Antonio Salieri in the film version of Peter Shaffer's Amadeus, Mr. Abraham has won a new generation of admirers in the role of Dar Adal on Showtime's mesmerizing Homeland series. In 2010 the Guild honored him with a Gielgud trophy during a Grand Gallery ceremony that featured such luminaries as Tom Hulce and Ann Meara and Jerry Stiller, and warm memories of that NAC gala resurfaced as a roomful of admirers enjoyed another special evening with one of today's most charismatic performers. The next afternoon, Tuesday, May 14, we returned to the club's welcoming parlor for a spirited 2 p.m. Salon with John Douglas Thompson, an impressive actor who was earning plaudits as Kent in a Broadway presentation that starred Glenda Jackson in the title role of King Lear.
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.
For more detail about the Guild's 2018-19 programming, click here. If you wish to join and receive periodic updates, we invite you to visit our MEMBERSHIP page for types of affiliation. There you'll find a link to a page where you can register for events, enroll as a Guild member, or provide a tax-exempt DONATION.
