Locales and People of Shakespeare Talks!

"Our City. Our Shakespeare." examines Chicago's special relationship with the world's most translated and performed playwright. By weaving together footage from theater, opera, dance and improv performances on Chicago's stages and interviews with civic and cultural leaders, theater critics and artists alike, it is clear that Shakespeare lives on in Chicago.

I was truly blessed, when I lived in Dubai, to have made Arab, European, Indian, Southeast Asian and Iranian friends.  So at the heart of Shakespeare Talks!, when I conceived it in this milieu, is the idea of adapting whatever talk I gave and whatever act I staged to the locale and its people and culture.  It meant engaging some of these friends to participate in translating Shakespeare, reciting on stage, and engaging the very souls of those people and that culture.  Whether or not Barbara Gaines and her staff, crew and cast at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater have ventured much outside the US, it is clear they share my vision and they speak to the rich diversity that is Chicago.

A Future for Shakespeare Talks!

CST believes that Shakespeare speaks to everyone, transcending time and place. To that end, we have evolved into a dynamic company that produces award-winning plays at our artistic home on Navy Pier, throughout Chicago's schools and neighborhoods, and on stages around the world.

Since Artistic Director Barbara Gaines founded the Chicago Shakespeare Theater in 1986, my wife and I have attended a handful of stagings.  From its humble beginnings at the Ruth Page Theater, to its more spacious, modern digs at Navy Pier, there was something special to this home-grown production.  So it's hard not to feel enthralled at what Gaines relates: Shakespeare with excellence and nuance, and produced with theatricality and accessibility.  Moreover, CST has won the Regional Theater Tony Award, three Laurence Olivier Awards, and 78 Joseph Jefferson Awards.  In time, too, may Shakespeare Talks! grow into prominence with fine arts, rich culture, and undeniable success.     

The Spirit of Shakespeare Talks!

My main vision for Shakespeare Talks! is (a) to educate with entertain, such as talks on leadership for management teams, with a good dose of monologue and participation (Shakespeare Talks!); and (b) to entertain with educate, such as performances that involve and teach children (Shakespeare Acts!).  The idea is to bring Shakespeare to life so vividly and engagingly that it is as if he were in fact right there talking to us.  Besides these two programs, I also envision Shakespeare Motivates! and Shakespeare Retails!, again with both education and entertainment as their core.

I am grateful to live in Chicago, because it is a rich center for arts and culture.  Theater is prominent, from professional repertories, to university and community productions, it's an enthralling city.  So the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, for one, resonates with the spirit of Shakespeare Talks!

Extraordinary
Educational
Vibrant
Global
Surprising
Bold
Innovative
Engaging
Timeless
Ambitious
Audacious
Humanistic
Playful
Alive and well in Chicago!

Sonnet 46, by NY Shakespeare Exchange

Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war,
How to divide the conquest of thy sight;
Mine eye my heart thy picture's sight would bar,
My heart mine eye the freedom of that right.
My heart doth plead that thou in him dost lie,
A closet never pierced with crystal eyes,
But the defendant doth that plea deny,
And says in him thy fair appearance lies.
To 'cide this title is impannelled
A quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart;
And by their verdict is determined
The clear eye's moiety, and the dear heart's part:
      As thus: mine eye's due is thine outward part,
      And my heart's right, thine inward love of heart.

Sonnet 46, from The Sonnet Project, by the New York Shakespeare Exchange.

Shakespeare plays out that mortal war quite deftly, and interestingly an adjudication is necessary to settle it.  In Freudian terms, the heart is the id (the repository of impulse and desire); the eye (perhaps) the ego (the executor between self and reality); and in the courts sits the superego (the overseer, the judge, the arbitrator).  It's delightful acting and recitation by pretty Sydney Lucas, whose smile has a sly look and tone to it, as if the object of both her eyes and heart is hers and will always be hers.

Sonnet 97, by NY Shakespeare Exchange

How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December's bareness everywhere!
And yet this time removed was summer's time;
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
Like widow'd wombs after their lords' decease:
Yet this abundant issue seemed to me
But hope of orphans, and unfathered fruit;
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And, thou away, the very birds are mute:
      Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer,
      That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near.

Sonnet 97, from The Sonnet Project, by the New York Shakespeare Exchange.

I've lived in Chicago nearly all of my life, and as a poet there is lyricism to the passage of seasons here.  It doesn't matter which one, they're all ripe with metaphor.  They all resonate with something in me, which poetry puts its particular language to.  So this sonnet resonates with something in me, then.  Notice how its volta is actually situated at the start of the third quatrain, as if perhaps the sonnet really could not sustain summer pleasures or teeming autumn for any length of time.  The final couplet doesn't reverse the mood, but simply seals with a kind of nail to the coffin. 

Sonnet 109, by NY Shakespeare Exchange

O! never say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seemed my flame to qualify,
As easy might I from my self depart
As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie:
That is my home of love: if I have ranged,
Like him that travels, I return again;
Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,
So that myself bring water for my stain.
Never believe though in my nature reigned,
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
That it could so preposterously be stained,
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;
     For nothing this wide universe I call,
     Save thou, my rose, in it thou art my all.

Sonnet 109, from The Sonnet Project, by the New York Shakespeare Exchange.

What a delightful interpretation of this sonnet, one that I imagine many millennial couples can relate to.  I suppose All's Well That Ends Well could be its title.  But then again maybe not.