Thursday, November 12, 2015
Shakespeare 400 arts festival will make Chicago all the world's stage
Chicago Tribune: In celebration of the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare, Chicago will host a huge interdisciplinary arts festival in 2016, dubbed "Shakespeare 400." Led by the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, the extravaganza will encompass more than 60 local and about a dozen international cultural organizations and entrepreneurs, ranging from the Royal Shakespeare Company of Stratford-upon-Avon to the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Shanghai Peking Opera to the Joffrey Ballet, and from the Pushkin Theatre of Moscow to celebrity chefs and restaurateurs like Rick Bayless and Alpana Singh.
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I know I have commented here before praising Chicago, and essentially working as an advertisement for its theatre community, but once again I am impressed by my home city. On the one hand, I am a Shakespeare junkie, and am therefore excited for any opportunity I can find to enjoy his works. But more importantly, this initiative is a perfect example of the sense of community that can be found by a city, amidst its friendly competition. The collective goal of the theatre community of Chicago is to make work, good work, new work, and exciting work. Each company wants to do that better than the rest, but they are still excited when the rest do it. Zooming out a bit, the rest of the importance of this article comes from the political implications of Rahm Emmanuel's endorsement and encouragement of the festival. Clearly, because there are no comments on this article other than mine, very few people outside of Chicago care about what is going on in Chicago. I sincerely hope that this will change, and the international collaboration and attention that this will bring to the city will put it into a category of theatrical hubs akin to New York, Los Angeles, and London. I don't hope this just because I love the city, but because I think that the city's sense of communal ensemble is something that our world-wide theatrical community could use a dose of.
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