TribLIVE: Ferdy Roberts admits that William Shakespeare used to terrify him.
“My brain doesn't work that way,” says Roberts, one of the three founders and artistic directors of Filter Theatre in London.
So, in 2006, when the Royal Shakespeare Company commissioned Filter Theatre to create a new production of Shakespeare's “Twelfth Night” Roberts and his co-artistic directors Ollie Dimsdale and Tim Phillips decided to create the sort of production they wanted to see.
1 comment:
Every new production of Shakespeare needs some new spin to it nowadays. It would be very rare right now to see a straight forward production of a Shakespeare play set in the given time period, with the text unaltered, and all the characters cast with the expected genders, age, etc. CMU’s production of “Anthony and Cleopatra” was one of the best shows I’ve seen here so far, however I still don’t know if it was really “Anthony and Cleopatra” because it definitely wasn’t the show Shakespeare had in mind when he wrote it. I think this phenomenon comes from the fact that a lot of Shakespeare material, while perfectly acceptable at the time he was writing, is really problematic now. Just think about how off-putting it would be to see a production of Taming of the Shrew, performed but just men and boys as it would have been originally. Instead, we have productions like the one Chautauqua is doing this summer where the genders of all the characters have been switched. I love that theaters have found a way to continue using Shakespeare’s material while changing it to address modern issues and speak to a modern audience, I just wish the discussion about the reasons behind it, and especially regarding the sexism and racism in much of his work, could be more open and honest.
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