In addition to its GIELGUD AWARD ceremonies and its SPEAKING
OF SHAKESPEARE series, the Guild has long provided its constituents with a variety
of other cultural activities. During the summer of 1992, for example, we
joined hands with the GROVE SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL in California for
a Great Shakes Alive initiative that included a Macbeth
with David Birney and Joan Van Ark as the two protagonists. Two years later,
during the spring of 1996, we contributed Bardic highlights to the
inauguration of a DISNEY INSTITUTE in Florida. And over the decades that followed we arranged and co-spoonsored attractions such as the following.
PREVIEWING KENNETH BRANAGH'S MOST AMBITIOUS FILM
in December of 1996, the Guild co-sponsored
A Stellar Shakespearean Weekend, offering attendees a preview
screening of Kenneth Branagh’s epic Hamlet, and collaborating
with the SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION and the FOLGER SHAKESPEARE LIBRARY on a
symposium that featured a Susan Stamberg interview with the star and filmmaker
(portions of which were later broadcast over NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO) and
a discussion that included remarks by Sir Derek Jacobi and other luminaries.
These festivities received front-page coverage in The Shakespeare Newsletter.
WORKING WITH THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING UNION AND OTHER INSTITUTIONS
Since 1998, when it initiated SPEAKING
OF SHAKESPEARE at the NATIONAL PRESS CLUB with director Peter Brook,
the Guild has operated in close association with the ENGLISH-SPEAKING UNION
and a number of other organizations. Attractions created under these auspices
have been broadcast by the BBC, by NPR, and by C-SPAN’s weekend Book
TV service. And they have taken place in such London settings as BAFTA'S PRINCESS
ANNE AUDITORIUM, DARTMOUTH HOUSE, the GIELGUD THEATRE, the GUILDHALL, and
MIDDLE TEMPLE HALL. They've also occurred at the BROAD STAGE in Santa Monica; at the CHICAGO
SHAKESPEARE THEATER in the Windy City; at ARENA STAGE, the BRITISH EMBASSY,
the COSMOS CLUB, DACOR BACON HOUSE, FORD'S THEATRE, the NATIONAL PRESS CLUB,
the NATIONAL TRUST FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION, the SHAKESPEARE THEATRE COMPANY,
the UNIVERSITY CLUB, the WASHINGTON CLUB, and the WOMAN'S NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC
CLUB in the District of Columbia; at the ENGLISH-SPEAKING UNION, THE LAMBS,
the MORGAN LIBRARY AND MUSEUM, the NATIONAL ARTS CLUB, THE PLAYERS, the
PRINCETON CLUB OF NEW YORK, and THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE in New York City,
and the LENSIC PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, SAN MIGUEL MISSION, and at the SANTA
FE BOTANICAL GARDEN in New Mexico's capital city. For details about these
and a variety of related activities, see the ESU WASHINGTON announcements
and newsletters for 2001, 2002,
2003, 2004,
2005, 2006,
and 2007.
CULTURAL INITIATIVES IN THE LAND OF ENCHANTMENT
In 2011, four years after Mr. Andrews and his wife moved from DC to the
Southwest, the Guild collaborated with Santa Fe's majestic LENSIC PERFORMING
ARTS CENTER on a special presentation of The Tempest that starred
Sir Derek as Prospero and his partner
Richard Clifford as Prospero. This
musical adaptation commemorated two significant anniversaries: a Whitehall
presentation of Shakespeare's play in 1611 and the founding of a "brave
New World" capital a few months earlier.
In 2012 The Guild joined forces with the NEW MEXICO MUSEUM OF ART in Santa
Fe for a series of "Centennial
Fridays" to commemorate a century of statehood for the Land of Enchantment.
In 2017 the Guild joined musicologist Mary Springfels and her
distinguished colleagues for a concert in what is said to be America's oldest
church. A co-production with Severall
Friends, an early-music ensemble that draws its name from Elizabethan
composer Matthew Locke, Shakespeare
at San Miguel took place in a chapel whose foundations date from
the poet's lifetime. Highlighted by acclaimed instrumentalists and singers,
this special evening featured eleven of Shakespeare's sonnets, which were
artfully interspersed with thematically-related lyrics by Thomas Campion,
William Dowland, and other composers. Click here
for musicologist James M. Keller's detailed preview in Pasatiempo.
A TRIBUTE TO THE AUTHOR OF "TO SIR, WITH LOVE"
As we reflect on the recent death of Sidney
Poitier, a great actor and an inspiring leader, our thoughts return
to the life and legacy of the gifted teacher, writer, and cultural ambassador
who inspired one of Mr. Poitier's most memorable roles.
On Saturday, March 25, 2017, the Guild played a small role in a WASHINGTON NATIONAL CATHEDRAL
memorial service for E.
R. Braithwaite, the author who gave us To Sir, With Love, a
1959 literary best-seller that became a celebrated 1967 film with Poitier
in the role that Mr. Braithwaite's autobiographical novel had made famous.
Mr. Braithwaite died at the age of 104 on December 12, 2016, and Guild president
John Andrews was one of the three speakers who eulogized him in the Cathedral's
lovely Bethlehem Chapel.
The service concluded with an organ rendering of Lulu's musical tribute
to "Sir," a recording that had been popular music's number-one single a
half-century earlier.
Click here
to watch a February 2007 conversation between Mr. Andrews and Mr.
Braithwaite that has been telecast several times on C-SPAN's weekend
Book TV service and now seems particularly resonant. And click here
for links to Mr. Andrews' C-SPAN appearances with other authors, among them
ecologist Lester R. Brown, political leader Susan Eisenhower, Shakespeare
scholar Stanley Wells, and cultural historian A. N. Wilson.
A FAREWELL SALUTE TO EDUCATOR HOMER SWANDER
Because he requested that there be no memorial service or detailed obituary,
many of his colleagues were late in learning that Homer D. Swander, known
to most of his friends as "Murph," died in Santa Barbara at the age of 96
on February 15, 2018. Professor Swander served for many years on the Editorial
Board of Shakespeare Quarterly,
and he contributed seminal articles about the editing and performing of
playwright's scripts. One of his many contributions to the teaching of dramatic
literature lives on in ACRORS FROM THE LONDON STAGE, a program now administered
by the University of Notre Dame, and the Guild paid tribute to him and to
AFTLS during the October 2015 UK Theatre Awards luncheon at London's historic
Guildhall. For details about that ceremony, and about Dr. Swander's powerful
influence, click here and scroll down
to the paragraphs at the bottom of the page. Click here
for a tribute to Murph that his devoted friend Sir Patrick Stewart published
in The Guardian. And click here
for a more extended homage that Guardian editors had to abbreviate
because of limited space.
RECALLING A MEMORABLE ADDRESS BY JOHN McCAIN
As his loved ones and admirers were eulogizing John McCain, a statesman
who died on August 25, 2018, a number of Shakespeare Guild constituents
were thinking back to July 4, 2005, when the Senator was at Dartmouth House
in London to deliver an ALISTAIR COOKE MEMORIAL LECTURE. Among
the attendees at this occasion was John F. Andrews, who headed both the
Guild and the Nation's Capital Branch of the English-Speaking Union at that
time, and his wife Jan Denton. In October of 2004, Mr. Andrews had attended
a Westminster Abbey memorial service for Mr. Cooke, and had played a significant
role in a preceding discussion of ways in which Mr. Cooke's many contributions
to Anglo-American relations might best be commemorated. For an overview
on the July 2005 festivities, click here.
And for details about ESU Washington's role in the what turned out to be
a special occasion, click here
and scroll down to the second page. Also of interest might be a Guardian
interview with Senator McCain that supplemented his remarks about "An
American Patriot Today".
WINCHESTER'S COMMEMORATION OF "THE GREAT WAR"
On Saturday, November 11, 2018, John Miller, a key member of the Guild's
distinguished Advisory Council, produced an evocative memorial service at
England's Theatre Royal Winchester that featured recitations by performers
Pamela Miles and Michael Pennington. For details about a program that highlighted
responses to World War I by such gifted poets as Rupert Brooke, John McCrae,
Wilfred Owen, and Sigfried Sassoon, and by such eloquent statesmen as David
Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, click here.
And for a look at the deeply moving script that Mr. Miller assembled for
the proceedings, click here.
Sadly, John died in October of 2022. Click here for the obituary that apppeared in The Guardian.
REMEMBERING JUSTICE RUTH BADER GINSBURG
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,
who died in September of 2020. 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.
"SHELTERING WITH SHAKESPEARE": OBSERVATIONS BY DAKIN MATTHEWS
One of the most imaginative, and deeply generous, of the many responses
to the disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic was an extraordinary
series of online presentations by actor, director, playwright, translator,
and teacher Dakin
Matthews, who came up with an enriching way to use the time he had available
when his pivotal role as Judge Taylor in director producer Aaron Sorkin
and director Bartlett Sher's award-winning Broadway production of
To Kill a Mockingbird came to an end with the premature closing
of that remarkable show. In association with
Theatre for a New Audience Dakin recorded an extaordinary series of
online guides to the playwright's unique artistry, with extensive coverage
of topics that would be of interest not only to theater professionals but
to what the editors of Shakespeare's First Folio referred to as "The Great
Variety of Readers."
Here is Dakin's introduction
to this extraordinary resource. And here are his remarks in SERIES ONE about
Common Sense,
The
Mystery of Acting, Muse
of Fire, Inventing
Shakespeare, Special
Providence, Interplay,
Sonnet 104,
Beatrice and Benedick,
An Introduction
to Rhetoric, The
Prosodic Line, One
Touch of Nature,
The Art of
Empathy, Sonnet
130, Champion
and Challenger, Rhythym
and Meter, The
Shakespearean Beat, Rain
It Raineth, Claudius,
Sonnet 63,
The Fallacy
of the Line-End, Onomatopoeia,
Sound Texturing,
Regicide,
The World,
the Flesh, and the Devil, Lear's
Love Test, Shakespeare
on Suicide, The
Lady Doth Protest, and Order
and Degree.
In SERIES TWO Dakin offers insights into Shakespeare's
Rules, Ambiguity,
Psychology
(1), Psychology
(2), Psychology
(3), Shakespeare's
Astronomy, Sonnet
110, Blank
Verse, The
Poetic Voice, Problem
Plays, The
Hamlet Problem, Enter
Servant, Thanks
for Shakespeare, Wherefore
Art Thou Therefore, Analyzing
a Random Passage, Sonnet
59, Speech Structure,
The Ring
Speech, The
Amazing Spondee, and Meta
Shakespeare.
In SERIES THREE he proceeds to observations that focus primarily on FEMALE
SPEECH, with an Introduction,
followed by Female
Speech 1, Female
Speech 2, Female
Speech 3 (The Churn), Female
Speech 4 (Helena), Female
Speech 5 (Helena 2), Female
Speech 6 (Helena's change), Female
Speech 7 (Helena and Diana), Female
Speech 8 (The Ending),
If Music Be the Food of Love,
Nature's Above Art,
Measure for Measure 1,
Measure for Measure 2,
Measure for Measure 3,
Measure for Measure 4,
Measure for Measure 5,
Measure for Measure 6,
Measure for Measure 7,
Measure for Measure 8,
Measure for Measure 9,
Measure for Measure 10, and
Loving and Loathing.
In SERIES FOUR he devotes 25 conversations to THE SONNETS. He
commences with Introduction.
He then proceeds to observations about Sonnet
Structure, Sonnet
Verse vs. Dramatic Verse, Story
Behind Sonnets 1, Story
Behind Sonnets 2, Sstory
Behind Sonnets 3, Sstory
Behind Sonnets 4, Story
Behind Sonnets 5, Sonnet
9, Schemes
and Sonnets, Speaking
Sonnets Aloud, How
Not to Speak a Sonnet, The
Sonnet Voice, Sonnets
and Speech Melodies, Sonnet
10, Part 1, Sonnet
10, Part 2, Sonnet
2, Part 1, Sonnet
2, Part 2, Sonnet
76, Part 1, Sonnet
76, Part 2, Seventy
Iambs NYT, Part 1, Sonnet
18 NYT, Part 2, Sonnet
104, Sonnet 59,
Sonnet 110.