SPEAKING OF SHAKESPEARE ENGAGEMENTS
We extend warm greetings to those who are new to the GUILD, and gratitude
to those who've contributed to the success of our many programs. As you
browse these pages, clicking on the blue links that serve as navigating
devices, you'll see that we're now using aonline formats for most of
our offerings. All but a handful have been produced in collaboration
with the National Arts Club
in Manhattan, and our conversations with DAME
JUDI DENCH and SIR IAN MCKELLEN, which drew more than 2,000 viewers apiece
from around the globe, have attracted the
NAC's largest audiences of the 2021 season.
At the moment we're focused on a special celebration that will take place Saturday evening, April 23, in
Westminster Abbey. One of the globe's most iconic settings, this historic
institution is renowned, among other things, for Poets'
Corner, a sacred spot where legendary authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer and William
Shakespeare are honored along with a significant number of other distinguished artists, among them
performers such as Henry Irving (the first actor to be knighted) and Laurence
Olivier (a star whose name is attached to to the awards that recognize each year's leading theatrical achievements in London's West End). We're delighted to announce that a new memorial, a floor plaque
to commemorate the life and legacy of Olivier's most eminent contemporary,
SIR JOHN GIELGUD, will be dedicated as the highlight of the Guild's upcoming celebration
of Shakespeare's 458th birthday and Gielgud's 118th. Details about this special gathering, and about several programs to prepare the way for it, will be
provided shortly.
RECENT ATTRACTIONS
Our most recent event, on Sunday, September
19, was a delightful conversation with
IAN MCKELLEN, who was thrilling audiences in a production of Hamlet
at Theatre Royal Windsor. Now 82, Sir Ian was starring in an age-blind,
color-blind, and gender-blind presentation of the drama with which Players
founder
Edwin Booth concluded his acting career in 1891 at the
Brooklyn Academy of Music. Co-hosted by cabaret artist Shana
Farr and Guild president John
Andrews, it was presented under the auspices of
The Players. To watch it,
click
here.
Another recent offering -- also hosted by Ms. Farr, who serves as Vice-President
for The Players --
was a wide-ranging discussion with JOHN ANDREWS himself. To enjoy this dialogue, which occurred Tuesday,
June 22, click here.
Two months earlier, on Saturday, April 24, Ms. Farr and Mr. Andrews had
co-hosted a Shakespeare's Birthday gathering with Oscar laureate F.
MURRAY ABRAHAM, an exchange that celebrated what has long been revered
as Edwin Booth's club, a historic institution that was founded by the actor
in 1888. To watch it, click
here.
An earlier highlight, on Monday, June 14, was a delightful conversation
between Mr. Andrews and SUSAN
STAMBERG, one of the radio
pioneers who made All Things Considered an essential part
of our lives. In 1999 Mr. Andrews hosted an evening with Linda
Wertheimer and Cokie Roberts, two of Susan's NPR colleagues, at the
National Press Club. Three years earlier he had asked Ms. Stamberg, who'd
helped launch the Gielgud
Award in 1994, to interview Kenneth
Branagh (who would go on to to win that trophy in January of 2000) at
the Smithsonian Institution. Two years later Ms. Stamberg nterviewed 1998
Gielgud laureate Zoe
Caldwell and her husband Robert Whitehead at the Folger Shakespeare
Library. What led to this summer's program with her was a remarkable new
book, Susan,
Linda, Nina, and Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers
of NPR, by arts journalist Lisa
Napoli. It's a riveting narrative, and if you click
here you'll enjoy a memorable chat with the first of its title characters,
a legend whose many honors include a star on the Hollywood Boulevard Walk
of Fame.
Another spring attraction, on Tuesday, April 20, focused on playwright DAVID
HARE. Sir David took part in our 1999 Gielgud Award presentation
to Dame Judi Dench at the Barrymore
Theatre in New York, and he himself received our 2017 Gielgud trophy at London's venerable Guildhall.
To watch a memorable conversation
with an extraordinary dramatist, screenwriter, director, and performer,
click here.
Looking back to other highlights in a series that has attracted thousands
of viewers from around the globe, one was a delightful exchange with
IAN MCKELLEN. Sir Ian had received the Guild's inaugural Gielgud
Award for Excellence in the Dramatic Arts during a historically
resonant 1996 ceremony at the Folger
Shakespeare Library in Washington. And he rejoined us Wednesday, March
3, for an NAC@Home program that focused primarily on his dozens
of Shakespearean roles. To watch it,
click here.
On Wednesday, February 24, we chatted with one of Sir Ian's most cherished
theatrical colleagues,
JUDI DENCH. The Guild had honored Dame Judi with its 1999 Gielgud
trophy at Broadway’s Barrymore
Theatre during a gala that featured such luminaries
as Keith Baxter, Zoe Caldwell, Rebecca Eaton, David Hare, Hal Holbrook,
Robert MacNeil, Ronald Pickup, Toby Stephens, and Christopher Plummer. To
enjoy this charming visit to Dame Judi's home a few miles south of London,
click
here.
In late December of 2020 we saluted
RICHARD EYRE, who oversaw Britain's National Theatre during a decade
that featured such triumphs as a touring Richard III, with Sir
Ian McKellen in the title role, and the global premiere of Angels in
America. A young Judi Dench influenced Sir Richard's decision to become
a director, and he took part in the 1999 Gielgud ceremony that
paid tribute to her. Sir Richard has also enriched our lives with a number
of cinematic gems, among them Iris and Notes on a Scandal,
both of which starred Dame Judi, and a recent King Lear with Sir
Anthony Hopkins in the title role. Click
here for a riveting hour with one of our most visionary dramatic artists.
On September 13, 2020, the Guild joined Santa Fe's Lensic Performing Arts
Center, for a lively dialogue with JIM
DALE, a celebrated and remarkably versatile 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.
And click
here to watch a resonant conversation with Harvard's STEPHEN
GREENBLATT that was recorded in late June of 2020 but held for realease
until August 19. It was a wide-ranging exchange that 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 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, 2020, we arranged an afternoon session with F.
MURRAY ABRAHAM, a gathering that permitted the Guild to introduce an
actor who grew up in the Southwest to his admirers at Santa Fe's Lensic
Performing Arts Center. To watch this conversation, click
here. A few weeks later, on August 12, we enjoyed a delightful National
Arts Club exchange with actor JOHN
DOUGLAS THOMPSON. He had recently portrayed the Duke of York in the New
York Public Theater's WNYC
audio presentation of Richard
II, and that was one of the topics we addressed with him. To watch
this engaging dialogue, which was promoted by both Broadway
World and Thought
Gallery and elicited questions from viewers around the nation, click
here.
Many of the admirers who joined us for that event had also participated
in a dialogue on May 26, 2020, with JAMES
SHAPIRO of Columbia University.
Click here to watch an NAC discussion that explored Shakespeare
in a Divided America, a timely volume that the New York Times
has recently identified as one of The
Ten Best Books of 2020.
As we recall the days before Covid-19 changed our lives, many of us are
now feeling nostalgic about evenings such as one that occurred on February
26, 2020, 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 stately Hampden-Booth
Library, was recorded by Ed's son, Leo
Sorel, and thanks to him and his colleague James
Salzano, we hope to make it available soon on YouTube.
Because of the Trumpidemic that followed
that special occasion, we've postponed several 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 draws on "Lessons from a Renaissance
Education" to explain How to Think Like Shakespeare).
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's top single of 1967. For more detail about
Ambassador Braithwaite, who died in 2016, visit OTHER
OFFERINGS.
THE GUILD'S 2019 GIELGUD AWARD CEREMONY IN LONDON
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 publications such as 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 peruse our brief
overview about the gathering,
it proved to be a memorable occasion, and one that saluted not only that
year's Award recipient but Clive
Francis, the actor and visual artist whose caricatures are among the
highlights of a beautiful 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 dated 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 last October'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, co-starring Emma Thompson and Stanley Tucci
and featuring Fionn Whitehead in a screenplay by novelist Ian McEwan, was
gripping moviegoers 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" (Michael Billington of The
Guardian) to open soon on Broadway.
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 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.
For more detail about the Guild's 2018-19 programming, click here.
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