Aditi Kapil and Liz Engelman are digging up ways to breathe life into some of Shakespeare’s (ahem) “mustier” laugh lines for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s “Play On! 36 playwrights translate Shakespeare” project. Aditi and Liz talk about teaming up on Measure for Measure, and the problem with Pompey’s posthumous punch-lines.
Find out how Thoron and Dubiner are tackling one of the most ambitious, talked-about, and controversial projects in the world of contemporary Shakespeare performance – and get a taste of what a modern translation of The Merchant of Venice might sound like.
The reading was part of OSF’s innovative “Play on!” initiative. “Play on!” brings together contemporary playwrights and theater scholars — dramaturgs, as they are called — to translate all 39 plays in Shakespeare’s canon into modern poetic language.
OSF is commissioning 36 playwrights and pairing them with dramaturgs to translate 39 plays attributed to Shakespeare into contemporary modern English between now and December 31, 2018.
May 5 – 14, 2017 | Production | Kansas City Repertory Theatre | Kansas City, MO, USA
April 20 – May 14, 2017 | Alabama Shakespeare Festival | Production | Montgomery, AL, USA
In October 2016, actors and directors from the Colorado Shakespeare Festival read through drafts of two newly-translated plays, “Henry VI, Part 2” and “Henry VI, Part 3.” These modern-day translations of the Bard’s timeless words, part of OSF’s Play On! initiative, were done by playwright Douglas Langworthy.
Since 1935, this mountain town has been home to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, whose guiding spirit is present not just onstage, but also in the names of businesses like Oberon’s Tavern and the All’s Well Herb and Vitamin Shop.
This week’s guest Lue Douthit, director of Play on! at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, discusses translating Shakespeare. Plus the editors talk about Humana.
Four hundred years after the death of William Shakespeare, on April 23, 1616, he remains as celebrated as ever. Festivities to commemorate the playwright’s life and work are planned everywhere from Germany to Shanghai. The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., has sent a flock of First Folios—the earliest collection of Shakespeare’s plays, now one of the most valuable books in history—to alight in every U.S. state.
