lay On! began as a project of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, rewriting the works of Shakespeare into 39 works in modern English. The hope was that a wider audience would discover the brilliance of Shakepeare anew.
Category: Press (page 12)
Montgomery native Kamilah Long helps bring modern understanding to Shakespeare’s words
Long, who attended Carver High School and Alabama State, is the new managing director for Play On Shakespeare; Through her role, she’s helping Montgomery students
Play On! continues despite the Great Pause
Play On! Shakespeare, an organization funded by the Hitz Foundation that seeks to enhance the understanding of Shakespeare’s plays for theater professionals, students and audiences by engaging with contemporary translations and adaptations, continues its work despite the COVID-19 crisis.
Review: Shakespeare’s darkest comedy, ‘Measure for Measure’ seems ripped from the headlines
Can Shakespeare truly resonate with contemporary audiences? When the comedy of “Measure for Measure” features corrupt politicians, sexual harassment and hypocritical abuses of power, the NOLA Project’s rendition often bears a ripped-from-the-headlines aura.
A Diverse Shakespeare
W.E.B. Du Bois would be proud of an ongoing effort to “translate” all 38 plays by William Shakespeare into an English intelligible to contemporary patrons of the stage.
“I sit with Shakespeare,” Du Bois wrote, “and he winces not.”
African-American Shakespeare Co. sharpens Macbeth’s dagger
This is not your grandfather’s “Macbeth,” but it is “Macbeth” as adapted in a modern verse translation by Migdalia Cruz and powerfully produced by the African-American Shakespeare Company.
Howard Sherman: Shakespeare ‘translations’ can be a gateway drug to the real thing
When the Oregon Shakespeare Festival announced, in the autumn of 2015, that it would be commissioning translations of all of Shakespeare’s plays, battle lines were immediately drawn.
How Do You ‘Translate’ Shakespeare?
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.
See Today’s Playwrights Adapt the Shakespeare Canon at Play On! at Classic Stage Company
In 2015, Oregon Shakespeare Festival commissioned 36 playwrights—more than half of whom were women and playwrights of color, each paired with a dramaturg—to translate Shakespeare’s canon into contemporary modern English. Beginning this May, the 39 resulting work-in-progress adaptations will be presented at Off-Broadway’s Classic Stage Company.
Dr. Shakespeare, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Play On
When Lue Douthit, longtime literary director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, told me that she had hired 36 playwrights to translate Shakespeare’s scripts into contemporary English, I didn’t get it.