TDF Stages
How Do You ‘Translate’ Shakespeare?
By Jonathan Mandell | May 30, 2019
Director and dramaturg Lue Morgan Douthit didn’t grow up loving the Bard. Her grandparents took her to Shakespeare summer festivals from the time she was 7, but “it wasn’t anything that stuck with me,” she says. Even during her 12 years earning several academic degrees in theatre, she never took a single Shakespeare class. Yet her extensive experience with emerging playwrights made her the perfect person to oversee Play On!, Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s ambitious initiative to commission 36 American dramatists to translate the Bard’s plays into “contemporary modern English.” Through June 30, New York audiences can see readings of all 39 plays from this project at Classic Stage Company in the East Village.
