Shakespeare Magazine ~ Fall 1996

FALL 1996

News on the Rialto.
Information about theatre, film, video, lectures, seminars, and conferences.

Looking for Richard.
An interview with Michael Hadge, the producer of the new Looking for Richard film starring Al Pacino and Winona Ryder.

"We wanted to not only introduce Shakespeare to people who had not been introduced to him before, but to introduce everybody to a process in which they-students, actors, directors, the public, and teachers-can attack the work and come to grips with it."

Shakespeare in the Yard.
Sherry Stidolph, a kindergarten teacher who works with students through fourth grade, tells how she converts Shakespeare's plays to stories and helps students enact them through drama and art.

"Shakespeare does in his plays what children do in their lives: play with reality. Using child development theories as a guide, I invite children to play in Shakespeare's yard."

Branagh's Hamlet --
Power and Opulence.
Photos from the set and Kenneth Branagh's comments on his bold interpretation, as told to Mike LoMonico in a SHAKESPEARE exclusive interview.

Ophelia, a Woman for All Seasons.
SHAKESPEARE editors went to the archives of the Billy Rose Theatre Collection in Lincoln Center in New York City and to the art collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library to find rare production photos of Ophelias through the ages.

Best of the Best.
Four veteran teachers tell how they approach Hamlet, and what activities work best for them and their students. Diane Antonelli Herr shows us how she uses pre-unit writing to focus students' emotional reactions to Hamlet's situation. Suzanne Peters tells how she leads students into on-the-feet acting on the first day of the unit. Michael Tolaydo explains how he gets his college students to do the dumbshow in Hamlet 3.2 then create their own dumbshow for other scenes. Josh Cabat tells how he gets his students to produce Hamlet trailers for a culminating activity.

Using the Internet to Teach Hamlet.
Technology wizards Amy Ulen and Joe Bonfiglio make online information easy. They searched the net and compiled a list of annotated web sites dealing with Hamlet. Then they created links to each of them for the SHAKESPEARE web site.

"Funeral Elegy" -- Did Donald Foster Uncover a Shakespeare Poem?
For the past year, scholars and the popular press have been debating whether the poem Professor Foster found is indeed Shakespeare's. Louisa Newlin interviewed the Vassar professor to come up with information about one of the most interesting Shakespeare stories in years.

"This poem contains many of Shakespeare's most unusual words, and usages that seem peculiar to Shakespeare, but also particular features of his language."

Shakespearean Compliments.
If you have had any contact with Shakespeare programs or workshops in the last five years, more than likely you have been handed a three-column sheet of Shakespearean terms and have practiced insulting your fellows. That sheet was the brainchild of Jerry Maguire, a teacher in Center Grove, Indiana. SHAKESPEARE asked Jerry to design a similar activity for compliments, and it appears in the magazine ready to take to the copy machine and use pronto.

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