Translations

“[In translation] the text shone a bright light on the play’s darker shadows….Shakespeare stays one step ahead, inventing, adapting, the expert conjurer distracting us with a new twist, a single word turning a conventional moment into a heart-stopping emotional insight.”  Kenneth Cavander, Playwright

“Beneath all the crusty gags, this play is about courage and authenticity, and it knows that these things are rare. The clowns aren’t, as it first appears, Kate and Petruchio. By the end, it’s everyone else. And this, I think, is the secret of the play’s enduring appeal, in spite of its crudeness and its…

“Contemporary imaginings of Romeo and Juliet frequently play to the tragedy… In fact, the play is filled with humor that is often either excised for time or lost to an unfamiliar image or syntactical choice that challenges the 21st century ear.” Aaron Malkin, Dramaturg

“I found that Richard III laid a foundation for his 28th play, Macbeth, a beautifully crafted poetically precise play. I found that Shakespeare stole lines from himself in Richard III and placed them into Macbeth, as so many playwrights do. We repeat themes, steal feelings and relationships from past work that still haunt us. This…

“The political turmoil in Richard II speaks in striking ways to the political turmoil we’ve been living through in recent years. We understand what it is to be disillusioned with our leaders and skeptical of the laws that order our everyday lives. I find now that I feel a certain degree of empathy for Richard…

“Pericles turns out to have been a strangely apt one for me. When I got inside it, I was humbled and moved by it far beyond what I had anticipated. The power of the final recognition scenes hit me the hardest, particularly the scene that Shakespeare seems to have built the play to hold: the…

“[the translation of Much Ado is] a play full of joy, pain, sass, and grit—full of theatrical potential. It’s an exciting conversation between the worlds of William Shakespeare and Ranjit Bolt.” Ben Spiller, artistic director

“Something miraculous happened for Mfoniso. She heard the rhythm of the play in an entirely new way. An artist who is highly sensitive to the different rhythms of speech patterns in colloquial English and African immigrants’ use of English, Mfoniso wanted to emphasize the different rhythmic qualities of Othello’s speech from everyone else’s in the…

“[Merry Wives is] intended to delight, amuse, and heal people through the laughter of recognition from an emerging middle class.” Dipika Guha, Playwright

“This play about race and prejudice is more devastating and relevant when an audience understands in real time what the characters are saying….At the play’s core, one feels the engine of humanity, its belief in our potential for equity and mercy in our treatment of each other, and how often we fall short, as we…