Tuesday, October 19, 2021
The Folger’s Karen Ann Daniels: Making the Shakespeare We Want
AMERICAN THEATRE: Karen Ann Daniels (she/her) has long had an interest in Shakespeare. From a trip to the Old Globe in middle school to seeing Keanu Reeves and Denzel Washington in the film of Much Ado About Nothing (still her favorite Shakespeare play) or Laurence Fishburne in Othello, Daniels wasn’t just impressed—she also saw a place for herself. “Oh, I guess I could do that,” she thought, she recalled in a recent interview.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
For better or for worse, Shakespeare is intertwined with theatre. He is pushed on students, producing companies, and anyone interested in interacting with theatre in any way. I, for one, think that this can work in many ways. Many Shakespeare plays pull on universal truths: love, injustice, and despair. However, Shakespeare in its original form erases and ostracizes the majority of people in theatre today. Daniel’s sums this idea up well when she says ‘There’s a lot of power in the word Shakespeare. I don’t always know if it’s deserved, but it’s there. So let’s work with it.” Utilizing the power of the name Shakespeare means we must innovate and adapt Shakespeare to tell stories that matter now. Making powerful, relevant, and uncommon Shakespeare adaptations is how theater artists can use a well-established theatrical name as an avenue for more current issues in the arts, while gaining larger audiences in the process. Daniels being named the president of Folger’s Shakespeare library is a huge step toward more diversity and unique voices in the creation, production, adaptation, and distribution of Shakespeare plays.
This article had A LOT to say and I think said it all in a fantastic way. Some of the hard-hitting lines for me were; “I see Shakespeare and capitalism as not inseparable.” and “As we do in America, we adopt everybody else’s things.” Not only have we adopted Shakespeare from England but we practically worship the man from an academic standpoint. Of course, Shakespeare is the classic. It is taught in schools, done live, and even recreated in the globe in England. There are inherent problems with worshipping any one individual, especially a white man from England. But what I love about this article is how it challenges what Shakespeare can do and who can utilize it. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival does this very well, they twist the stories into something new that starts a new conversation. At the end of the day, Shakespeare is a text, that’s it. It is words on a page that were written more than 400 years ago. It is what you do, how you act, what the lights do, who is directing, the story you tell, etc that makes modern Shakespeare as powerful as it is. I think what Karen Ann Daniels is doing to the word ‘Shakespeare is incredible and should be recognized.
Post a Comment