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.
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.
Though our ‘Play on!’ commissioning project has met with some vocal disapproval, the work is grounded in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s core values—and our love for the Bard.
THE Oregon Shakespeare Festival has decided that Shakespeare’s language is too difficult for today’s audiences to understand.
Oregon Shakespeare Fest’s new translation project pits purity against clarity, 400 years of reverence against a few hours’ traffic of the stage.
Last week, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival announced that it had commissioned thirty-six playwrights to translate all of Shakespeare’s plays into modern English. The backlash began immediately, with O.S.F. devotees posting their laments on the festival’s Facebook page.
My name is Lue. And when it comes to Shakespeare, I’m afraid I might be just a little bit tone-deaf.
And after working at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for more than twenty years, I am grateful that there isn’t a competency test because I would not have had the terrific career I have had. But there is much relief in finally confessing my dirty little secret.
