Shakespeare Magazine ~ Summer 2001

Shakespeare
Volume 5, Issue 3
FALL 2001

Othello in
High School

Hope Theater Company's Edward III
Josh Cabat reviews a production of this rarely performed, apocryphal play.

Shakespeare Is Blooming in Regent's Park
The New Shakespeare Company produces top-notch Shakespeare performances and an education program to match.

Scholars, Artists, and Enthusiasts Combine for Shakespeare Society
The desire of two New Yorkers to have a group where they could discuss "the greatest poet-dramatist in the English language" resulted in a vital new Shakespeare association.

"Make Not Your Thoughts Your Prisons": Shakespeare in a Different Place
Philippa Kelly relates her experiences teaching Shakespeare behind bars.

Noodling Around with the Text: Understanding Word Play in Romeo and Juliet
Ted Tibbetts gets out a script, pencils, and nerf noodles to help students understand Shakespeare's puns.

HAMNET Offers Rich Sources from the Folger Shakespeare Library
Betsy Walsh tells how to discover some of the best Shakespeare treasures around.

Shakespeare Magazine ~ Volume 5, Issue 3
Julia Stiles as the Desdemona figure in
Tim Blake Nelson's film O, a transformation of Othello.

FEATURE STORY

Othello in High School: A Response to O,
a Film by Tim Blake Nelson
Based on an interview with the director, Stephen Mounkhall comments on the new film which presents Othello as a black athlete in a Charleston prep school.

When director Tim Blake Nelson assembled the cast of O in Charleston, South Carolina, he began with an unusual approach. Rather than run through the contemporary language of the screenplay written by Brad Kaaya, each afternoon the cast rehearsed Shakespeare's Othello, with each actor playing the respective part from which his or her own character was derived. According to Nelson, his intention was to make the characters "absolutely contemporary, and at the same time, the emotions they are experiencing , age-old." The cast agreed that these rehearsals were invaluable to their individual and collective performances in O. "Because of the intensity of the way Shakespeare wrote dialogue, there is so much added emotion," said Rain Phoenix, who played Emily. "Having rehearsed from the original added so much depth to the characters."

BROADSHEET
Public Compliments and Private Thoughts (in pairs)--an excerpt from Rex Gibson's Cambridge School Shakespeare Macbeth.

NEWS ON THE RIALTO
A compendium of courses, conferences, and theatre performances around the world.

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