Michael Countryman, Raffi Barsoumian, Daniel Radcliffe and Reg Rogers in Privacy (photo by Joan Marcus)

Last week, The New York Times reported on a dispute between Theatre for a New Audience, one of the city’s major producers of classical theatre, and the acclaimed director Sam Gold. Gold had withdrawn from directing the company’s planned production of Hamlet, which was to star Oscar Isaac, the stage veteran and rising movie star. Gold cited artistic differences with TFANA’s leadership as the cause for the break, and the company’s artistic director was uncharacteristically public with his dismay. According to the article, Gold was shopping the production to other theatres, notably the Public Theater, and it appeared that he would be taking Isaac with him.

With only one side giving their account of the conflict, it’s impossible to parse what happened when, and who said what to whom. My attention, instead, drifted to the last paragraph of the article, which read: “Theatre for a New Audience ended up quickly making arrangements for a Measure for Measure production, directed by Simon Godwin, for next June. Without a star like Isaac, the theatre projected, Measure would make half the money that Hamlet would have.”

While Hamlet tends to be more popular than Measure in general, the implication of the article’s closing sentence, reflecting the sentiments of TFANA, is that the real loss is that of the ‘name’ performer, which will have an impact on the bottom line. That may well be true, though if it’s important to their planning, certainly the company has choice roles in Measure to offer up to other capable stars. I think Jessica Chastain would be a terrific Isabella, for example.

But should Off-Broadway companies be predicating their health on their ability to attract stars? Aren’t stars the essential ingredient of Broadway, with vastly more seats to fill and at a higher price?

That’s not to say that the idea of stars Off-Broadway is a new concept. I think back to the late Jessica Tandy at the Public in the early 1980s in Louise Page’s Salonika as an example of a legendary actor taking a role in a venue much smaller than the Broadway houses to which she was accustomed. But have we reached a point where the major Off-Broadway companies, subsidised theatres all, need names who have established themselves not just in the theatre, but in television or film as well?

Earlier this year at the Public, we saw Claire Danes, John Krasinski and Hank Azaria in Sarah Burgess’ Dry Powder, and right now Daniel Radcliffe is there in James Graham’s Privacy. This fall will see Rachel Weisz in David Hare’s Plenty. New York Theatre Workshop will have Daniel Craig and David Oyelowo in Othello (also directed by Sam Gold). George Takei will be at Classic Stage in John Doyle’s revival of Pacific Overtures. Matthew Broderick was at the Irish Repertory Theatre in Conor McPherson’s Shining City until just a couple of weeks ago. And so on.

None of this is invoked to question the talents of the actors involved, who absolutely should have the opportunity to do work on stages other than Broadway, even after they’ve achieved a level of fame that might well sustain a commercial run on the Great White Way. It’s also a credit to these companies that stars will forego the income and amenities of film, TV and Broadway to consider working there. The phenomenon is not new, though anecdotally it seems more prevalent than ever before.

But with more TV and film stars seemingly taking leading roles Off-Broadway as well as on, especially when it comes to plays, is the opportunity for solid working actors to be discovered in smaller houses being incrementally lost? After all, this year’s Tony winner for best featured actor in a play, Reed Birney, has only been in Broadway shows four times in his career, and there was a gap of more than 30 years between his first and second opportunity. It was Off-Broadway (and Off-Off-Broadway) that sustained him, but if more stars take leading roles, how will fine actors such as Birney manage to maintain their careers?

There’s no question that it is a special thrill to see a star who is also a superb actor in a small venue. But it is also a thrill to see great actors who may not yet have been ‘discovered’ and to watch younger actors hone their craft in major roles, as was the case with Nina Arianda in Venus in Fur. If the need for stars, that some bemoan is now a driving, even essential, force on Broadway, has trickled down to Off-Broadway as well, theatre may be denying itself the opportunity to create its own stars and falling prey to the drive toward ‘celebrity first’ that has permeated our culture. Indeed, this is reinforced by media outlets that only give coverage to theatre when there are big names on the stage; good work is no longer enough to merit mainstream media attention in many cases.

Off-Broadway seemed a place where theatre was holding out against this, but perhaps it has already lost its standing as a place where talent alone rules, with economic pressures increasingly underlying some creative choices. The question is whether it’s too late to do anything about it, or whether anyone actually wants to.

Empty display cases at the Longacre Theatre (Photo by Howard Sherman)

The fact that Nerds, a musical about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs which has been in development for a decade, cancelled its Broadway run less than a month before its first preview, shouldn’t be entirely shocking. After all, the marquee of the Longacre Theatre, where it was to begin performances, still carried the logo for Allegiance, the musical that closed there in February. At 5 pm on March 8, the day of the announced cancellation, the lighted display cases on the front of the building were empty and dark.

By the same token, the box office lobby was crammed full of equipment boxes for the show’s load-in. The cast was already in rehearsal. Presumably there was a nearly finished set somewhere, costumes on racks, and so on.

What happened to Nerds seems to happen every so often, but it’s one of the lesser discussed examples of a show going awry on Broadway. It doesn’t have the ignominy of closing immediately after its opening night (like the musical Glory Days) or the gossip page-worthiness of shutting down in previews (like the Farrah Fawcett vehicle Bobbi Boland). It’s not a case of a show that announced plans to happen, but never really came together, like Pump Boys and Dinettes did two years ago.

It’s not a saga like the cursed, headline-making musical Rebecca, twice underway and twice cancelled, with a con artist posing as the representative of a fictional investor behind its undoing. Because Nerds never began performances, it will never enter any of the history books or databases that would preserve its brush with Broadway.

Nerds was simply a lower profile show that, like a number before it, couldn’t survive the withdrawal of a key investor late in the game – or at least it stated that was the reason. The same thing happened to a revival of Godspell in 2008, although that one managed to get on three years later, with much of the same creative team and even a few of the same cast, albeit under the aegis of a different producer. But that’s more the exception.

The fate of Nerds is a reminder that for all of the bullish words about Broadway’s health – highest attendance! highest revenue! – many of the shows that get there may be doing so while playing a game of brinksmanship, racing the clock to get in the entire capitalisation by the legally mandated deadline. After all, if shows feature 10, 15, even 20 producers above the title, how many individual investors stand behind them, to make up budgets that can now be $4 million for a play, and in some cases four times that for a musical?

With Nerds, there are people who have suddenly been put out of work with no warning, there are people on the hook for expenses for a show that had its last full performance for a small invited audience on Wednesday in its rehearsal hall, there are creators whose dreams have been dashed. Nerds may quickly fade from the memories of the relatively few who were familiar with it, and it joins a list of other shows to meet the same fate. But it’s also an important reminder – in the era of juggernauts from The Phantom of The Opera and The Lion King to The Book of Mormon and Hamilton – of how many pieces have to come together to make a show a success, and just how fragile a new production can be.

Ian McKellen as King Lear (Photo by Simon Farrell)

Oh, British theatre, you’ve bested your American counterparts again, and you likely don’t even know about it. I should explain.

In late October, a new streaming service called BroadwayHD came online, to a flurry of press attention, likening the offering to Netflix or Hulu for the stage. As the holiday season often affords the opportunity to seek out online entertainment, I finally had the opportunity to peruse the offerings on the nascent BroadwayHD. To my surprise, I found remarkably little US theatre, let alone material from the Great White Way.

As of now, the relatively limited repertory of the service is comprised overwhelmingly of BBC offerings, tilted towards Shakespeare. Now, there’s no question that the selection is choice, featuring esteemed actors such as Judi Dench, Michael Gambon, Juliet Stevenson, Ian McKellen, Anthony Hopkins and others, but the fact is, few of the shows on offer ever played Broadway.

Rifling through the categories of comedy, classics, drama and musicals yields a decidedly anglicised view of theatre. The category of musicals, which one would expect to be a strong suit, is the most American of sections, but also particularly thin, with only nine offerings, the most recent being Memphis and the oldest being Tintypes from 1980. One of the titles is the Bette Midler made-for-television Gypsy, which was never performed on stage.

That’s not to say there’s no value in the service, because I’m eager to explore some of these pieces – Daniel Craig in Copenhagen, anyone? But for now, it remains largely a US subscription-based version of BBC’s iPlayer with a cache of older titles. It also points out, once again, how behind US theatre is in adapting to the newly pervasive video reality, whether broadcast into movie theatres like NT Live is, or available on a mobile device.

I will always say that filmed theatre is not true theatre because it alters according to what the video camera finds. The live experience is unparalleled. But until all of the parties concerned – producers, writers, directors, actors, designers, craftspeople and crew – get together to hammer out an agreement that makes it possible for more US theatre to be recorded and distributed electronically, us Americans will be runners-up to our British colleagues (and soon our Canadian ones as well). Without that commitment, access to theatre will remain out of the reach of swathes of our population, for geographic and financial reasons.

Meanwhile, less attentive users of BroadwayHD will be left wondering why all of these ‘Broadway’ shows were performed with British accents.

This essay originally appeared in The Stage.

Still from NYGASP video spot on YouTube

Oh, New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players, what are we going to do with you?

It was surprising to many that you thought you could do a “classic” yellowface Mikado in New York in 2015. But you also responded pretty quickly once there was an outcry against the practice, with the first blog posts of dismay (from Leah Nanako Winkler, Erin Quill, Ming Peiffer and me) posted on Tuesday and Wednesday and the production canceled by midnight on Friday morning. You’ve promised to bring your Mikado into alignment with current sensibilities at some point in the future, and I’m one of the many people who had cordial conversations with your executive director David Wannen in the wake of the September controversy.

So one can’t help be brought up short by your current commercial for The Pirates of Penzance, the production which replaced The Mikado at NYU’s Skirball Center. Shot in the Old Town Bar just north of Union Square, it features pub denizens having a Gilbert & Sullivan sing-off with some piratical looking men, as well as some geriatric British naval officers. All in good fun, it seems.

So why is there an admittedly brief shot in the ad of three yellowface geishas in a bar booth being leered at (by telescope, no less) by the British officers? Why is there still yellowface as part of advertising a production that was scheduled to eradicate yellowface?

Now I’m fully prepared to acknowledge this is probably an old TV spot, and all that has been changed is the superimposed show title, venue and number to call for tickets at the end. In fact, having watched New York television for much of my life, I’d say this spot could be quite old, and may well have emanated from days when Pirates, The Mikado and H.M.S. Pinafore were the bedrock of your repertory.

But in light of all that has happened over the past four months, seeing those faux-Asian women giggling behind their fans seems wholly out of place, if not a slap at those who advocated for a more enlightened take from you going forward. I acknowledge the effort and cost of recutting, or even reshooting, a commercial, but it might have been wise for you to not keep propagating the very imagery that led you to decide to cancel your production.

There’s no way to know whether you’re buying broadcast or cable time for the spot, but you just posted it to YouTube at the beginning of this month. This morning, the spot was featured in an e-mail blast you sent. So this possibly vestigial ad is still very much part of your marketing.

As I noted in a conference call with David Wannen, it is not lost on us that Albert Bergeret, the company’s artistic director, has not – so far as I know, and I’d be happy to be corrected – publicly expressed his support for the decision to remove The Mikado from your repertoire pending a reconception. Even this brief glimpse of yellowface suggests that the message of respecting ethnicities other than white hasn’t really sunk in. In fact, this could be seen by some as you winking at the controversy and telling your regular audiences that your “traditions” will be upheld, even if your sole intent was to economize and recycle an existing ad.

C’mon NYGASP, you said you were going to do better. You’ve taken some important steps, but it seems you’ve still got a ways to go.

Thanks to Barb Leung for sharing the e-mail and video from NYGASP.

 Howard Sherman is interim director of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts and director of the Arts Integrity Initiative at The New School College of Performing Arts.

One of the many achievements of Ira Glass’s This American Life is that it is a longform approach to storytelling, whether personal or reportorial. By not dumbing down, by not sound-biting, it has become one of the most acclaimed and honored radio programs of this generation, and has turned Glass himself into a well-recognized individual, both by voice and face. As a purveyor of subtlety, nuance, compassion and depth, Glass has connected with a significant community that is desirous of something greater than the clamor of most of what we consume in the media.

So I was very disappointed to discover these tweets this morning:

If there had been only a single tweet dissing Shakespeare, I might have let it pass. But the fact that Glass doubled down makes it worthy of comment. That holds true even if Glass isn’t particularly skilled at Twitter, and didn’t realize that his tweet to John Lithgow was a public message, instead of a private missive. But with his more than 83,000 Twitter followers, and his position as an influential figure in the media, it’s worth taking a moment to respond to what Glass wrote.

I hope that, had it not been 12:15 am, Glass might have realized that perhaps what he wanted to say was, “I, Ira Glass, don’t like Shakespeare. I don’t find his work relatable.” That’s a Twitter-friendly message, and while it’s one which might surprise me, it’s one with which I couldn’t quibble. He could have simply added “IMHO” (that’s “In My Humble Opinion” in social media speak).

I should share that, like many who go to the theatre a great deal, I have a level of Shakespeare fatigue, especially with the parade of Macbeths and Lears we’ve had in New York over the past few years. But, the fatigue for me is play by play; I don’t think anything would keep me from a reasonable diet of well-done Much Ados and Twelfth Nights, such is the pleasure I find in those plays.

Clarke Peters & John Lithgow in King Lear (photo: Joan Marcus)

I’ve never studied Shakespeare in any structured way, so it would be very difficult for me to make the intellectual and educational argument on behalf of the Bard. But there are literally thousands of books and professors and even autodidacts who would happily do so, and I have a strong suspicion that Glass is going to be hearing from them as today wears on.

I’ll just take a moment to suggest that, perhaps, Glass doesn’t fully understand, smart as he certainly is, the difference between a play and a production. Shakespeare provides the words of what he’s seen, but each interpretation varies. Perhaps he hasn’t seen Shakespeare productions that illuminate the words in ways that speak directly to him. Trust me, I know that there are plenty of those. That said, maybe he’ll never like any of the plays, no matter how they’re done. Never ever.

Mark Rylance as Richard III

I haven’t seen Lithgow’s Lear yet (it just started performances last week, by the way) and to be honest, if it weren’t for John (and for Jessica Hecht), I doubt I’d be going. I liked The Globe Theatre’s Twelfth Night with Mark Rylance rather well, though I didn’t care for the Richard III. But the fact is, I’d really be perfectly content to not see Richard III ever again. I don’t care for the play, an opinion forged over many productions, but I certainly don’t dismiss it. I’d look very foolish if I did.

Don’t think I’m trying to make the case for Shakespeare all the time. Our theatres need much more variety, even if school curriculums insure steady group sales for Shakespeare productions, and even if the lack of royalty costs makes them slightly more economical (balanced to some degree by their cast size, though I’ve seen the plays done on occasion with casts as small as five). It’s just that this sweeping generalization from someone who seems such advocate of the arts – and of considered thought and messaging – strikes me unfortunate, since it reinforces the prejudices of others, and even justifies them.

Look I get it, we all don’t like the same things, and frankly, when we’re told it’s good for us, we’re probably even less inclined to like something. We might also be hype-averse, from being told something is the best ever, part of the common online lexicon these days, but also the opinion of many when it comes to Shakespeare. And no matter what the build-up, no matter how much exposure we do or don’t get, there are creative endeavors we each don’t like, for whatever reason. Irrevocably. And that’s O.K.

I will ceaselessly defend Ira Glass’s right to publicly and vocally dislike Shakespeare. But as someone whose voice is amplified and respected, I just wish he’d said that he was sharing his opinion, not declaring an absolute.

Addendum, July 28, 5:45 pm: I just learned that Ira Glass was asked by Entertainment Weekly whether he stands by last night’s anti-Shakespeare tweets. His response: “That was kind of an off-the-cuff thing to say that in the cold light of day, I’m not sure I can defend at all.” So why say anything at all, Ira? He has not, however, sent any further tweets at this point on the subject to suggest that he might have been off the mark.

Rylance’s Richard III

When it comes to Shakespeare, not all plays are created equal. That’s far from a surprise to anyone who pays attention; Hamlet certainly ranks far ahead of King John in the canon, and even Coriolanus and Timon of Athens get more attention than Pericles. A great deal of this situation in recent years, at least in the U.S., is attributable to the educational curriculum, which has a strong hand in creating the “greatest hits.” The hierarchy is also a product of performers’ aspirations, and I daresay that when asked what Shakespeare roles they’d like to play, actors respond more frequently with Lear and Rosalind than Henry VIII and the Countess of Roussillon.

Rylance in Twelfth Night

The choices for the current Shakespeare plays in repertory on Broadway are among the more familiar titles, but they take on novelty for being all-male casts and indeed for being in rotating rep. Had it not been for the coincidence of a competing rep of Waiting For Godot and No Man’s Land in the same season, the Shakespeares would have been the only shows in rep on Broadway since the mid-90s. A key selling point in the Shakespeare rep is actor Mark Rylance, playing Olivia in Twelfth Night (or Twelfe Night as they’re spelling it in ads) and the title role in King Richard The Third.  After his triumphs in Boeing Boeing, La Bête and Jerusalem, one suspects the audiences would flock to anything Rylance chose to perform, except perhaps those poems he reads as award acceptance speeches.

The January calendar of Twelfth Night and Richard III

So while it’s hardly the discovery of a shocking secret, I was surprised today to discover that the Shakespeare rep doesn’t treat its productions as equals: in general there are six weekly performances of Twelfth Night and only two of Richard III. The producers (and perhaps Mr. Rylance) have decided that the market will bear plenty of comedy and not so much tragedy, with the added bonus that Stephen Fry appears only in the comedy, and for some of us, he’s a big draw too. They also may be saving a few dollars by making fewer set changeovers, since labor costs money.

I can’t say that I wouldn’t have lobbied for the same balance, if I’d had a say in the matter. I happen to have a great love for Twelfth Night, due to it having been the first play I worked on when I started at Hartford Stage in 1985. As for Richard III, even though I’ve seen terrific productions with Ian McKellen and Richard Thomas, among others, I always feel a bit lost in the constant realignment of loyalties throughout the play, and I rarely walk away having had an emotional experience, even as I might appreciate the talent on stage. Indeed, my college roommate, who has been my Shakespeare wingman for some three decades, was befuddled when I refused to see Richard III at BAM last year; I just didn’t feel like it and he wasn’t going to change my mind (he took his mother-in-law). By the way, I should note I have not yet seen the current Broadway shows.

Shakespeare scholars and Rylance buffs may be dismayed to learn of this programming imbalance. The former might not cotton to the elevation of a comedy over a history, but the latter may just be realizing that if they wish to be Rylance completists, they’d better hustle up on getting tickets, because the Richard III inventory is much scarcer than the seats for Twelfth Night.  As for whether there’s a deeper meaning to favoring one play over the other beyond gauging the marketplace, I leave that for the academics to debate.

P.S. Waiting for Godot and No Man’s Land each play four shows a week. Make of that, you should pardon the expression, What You Will.

Macbeth. Twelfth Night. Richard III. Romeo and Juliet. No Man’s Land. Waiting For Godot. Betrayal. The Winslow Boy.

The syllabus for a university survey course in drama? No. Instead, it’s the roster of eight of the 16 titles scheduled to open on Broadway between now and the end of 2013.

To be sure, British plays, artists and productions haven’t ever been strangers to Broadway, but this preponderance of works – featuring actors such as Jude Law, Mark Rylance, Rachel Weisz, Daniel Craig, Anne-Marie Duff, Stephen Fry, Orlando Bloom, Roger Rees, Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart – in the 40 theatres that comprise Broadway, all at the same time, is an embarrassment of riches. Add in concurrent Off-Broadway productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with David Harewood and Kathryn Hunter (opening the new Theatre for a New Audience space in Brooklyn) and Michael Gambon and Eileen Atkins in All That Fall, and it appears that Anglophilia is running rampant in the playhouses of New York.

Much of this is coincidence, since it’s not as if producers conspire on themes. Indeed, from a marketing standpoint, it’s not necessarily even a good idea, since the theatregoers most drawn to this work may have to face some tough buying decisions unless they have unlimited resources and time. Cultural tourists won’t even be able to fit all of these terrific sounding shows in, should they fly to the city for merely a long weekend.

But whether the productions are transfers from the UK or newly minted in America, as is the case with No Man’s Land, Romeo and Juliet, and Betrayal, the British imprimatur seems as if it’s a requirement this year, even if only in part. UK director David Leveaux is staging Romeo and Juliet with a North American cast capped by Bloom. US director Julie Taymor tapped Harewood and Hunter for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, her first project since the highly-publicised and contentious Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark (a tell-all book by her collaborator Glen Berger will be released just as Midsummer performances begin). Even the US classic The Glass Menagerie is being helmed by John Doyle. Only Classic Stage Company’s Romeo and Juliet, with Elizabeth Olsen and TR Knight, is wholly comprised of American artists, though their Romeo is Japan-born.

The English theatre can certainly take pride in this abundance of talent exported to American shores, and I look forward to each and every one of these shows enthusiastically. Indeed, I’ll pass on my annual autumn trip to London since I’ll need only take the subway and not British Airways.

But it does beg the question of whether classical work can succeed on Broadway without a UK connection. Are producers giving up on our best American actors and directors taking on British and Irish pieces without at least some of that heritage in the shows’ DNA? To be sure, not-for-profit companies may lean American overall (LCT’s Macbeth is Ethan Hawke), but has public television conditioned us to desire the “genuine” article? Great American plays appear on British stages frequently, ranging from A View From The Bridge to Fences to Clybourne Park, without the perpetual need to import Americans, let alone the cream of American talent, to make them work. Yet the power of UK casting appears to be such that even multiple Macbeths are deemed economically viable, with Alan Cumming having played virtually all of the roles on Broadway only months ago and Kenneth Branagh due at the Park Avenue Armory in June 2014.

I don’t like calling attention to national divisions when it comes to art, but the fall theatre season in New York simply can’t be overlooked. Despite the luxury of all of the great theatre on tap, the timing sends the message to US actors, theatre students, critics and audiences that when it comes to staging foreign classics, the talent exchange flows more strongly from west to east than in the other direction.

But looking on the bright side, perhaps this means we’ll soon enjoy one more benefit of the English stage, and be able to buy ice cream at the interval.

I’m unable to see a Shakespeare play without thinking of my late mother.

“How sweet,” you think, “He and his mother must have shared many great evenings together watching Shakespeare. Their common love of the Bard transcends her passing.”

Unfortunately, that’s not the case. I think of my mom, an elementary school teacher by training, whenever I’m headed to a Shakespeare production because, for the 23 years I lived in her house, I heard the same thing every time I was en route to see one of Bill’s plays.

“Did you read the story first?”

One of many editions of Charles & Mary Lamb’s “Tales From Shakespeare”

My mother was convinced that the only way to fully appreciate Shakespeare, because of the dense and archaic language, was to read a detailed plot synopsis immediately prior to seeing one of his plays. Specifically, she meant for me to pull down her copy of Charles and Mary Lamb’s Tales From Shakespeare from the living room shelves. Far predating such study guides as Cliff’s Notes, the Lamb book was originally written in 1807; my mom’s edition probably dated from the 1930s or 40s and was a tool in her own Shakespeare studies, such as they were.

I resisted my mother’s advice on a consistent basis, perhaps because I found Tales to be stodgy and unreadable on its own, or perhaps I was just being intellectually cocky. She never quite understood how I could see Shakespeare plays without this essential crutch. But my appreciation of theatre always seemed innate, rather than inspired by my parents, so this was simply one more example of how different we were from each other.

Ultimately, I learned about Shakespeare by seeing the plays over and over again, with an assist from the standard high school curriculum (including Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth). I remember being required to memorize Mark Antony’s funeral oration from Julius Caesar; perhaps there were a few other speeches I had to commit to memory as class work (though, oddly, today I most remember Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”).

My greatest training in Shakespeare came during my eight and half years as p.r. director at Hartford Stage, which gave me to opportunity to see and discuss the plays with Mark Lamos, the artistic director, who is most responsible for what Shakespeare knowledge I may have. During my tenure, we produced Twelfth Night, Pericles, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Julius Caesar and All’s Well That Ends Well; I’ve also seen productions of Measure for Measure, Cymbeline, As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet and Richard III directed by Mark. I’ve seen countless Shakespeare productions, but Mark was my true guide – beginning when I was 23 years old – immeasurably aided by my access to seeing the former group of plays multiple times in a short span.

Ken Ludwig’s book title says it all

I was reminded of all of this as read through the newly published How To Teach Shakespeare To Your Children (Crown Publishing, $25) by playwright Ken Ludwig, author of such plays as Lend Me A Tenor and Moon Over Buffalo.  Much as I’ve enjoyed Ludwig’s farces, I was mildly skeptical of his skills as a Shakespeare teacher, but in point of fact his book is exactly what its title says, a cogent, chapter by chapter study guide designed to empower parents to familiarize their children with Shakespeare’s language. Ludwig fundamentally believes in the primacy of Shakespeare’s work and words, so much so that he makes his case for parents teaching Shakespeare to their kids in only seven pages of the 314 page book, with memorization of key speeches as his touchstone. The rest is process.

Not having children, I can’t test Ludwig’s theories and conduct my own experiments. But surely he’s not alone in his belief in the value of memorization as introduction, as attested to by countless adorable YouTube videos of toddlers stumbling through Henry V’s speech before the battle at Agincourt and the like; an often viewed clip of Brian Cox teaching Hamlet to a youngster is a particularly delightful example. Though to be fair, the children on YouTube are younger than Ludwig’s suggested starting age of about six years, and surely the age should vary – if one wishes to embark on the Ludwig method – based upon the nature of each individual child.

As astute as Ludwig’s lessons are, I can’t help but think that they’re actually a stealth method of teaching Shakespeare to parents. Surely my mother might have grown more comfortable with the (to her) impenetrable language that got in the way of the stories; indeed, Ludwig’s book is focused more on moments from Shakespeare than with the plots themselves. A parent who doesn’t know, in particular, Hamlet, Midsummer and Twelfth Night might need a separate book to familiarize themselves with plots and cursory analysis before launching into the Ludwig method, besides reading the plays themselves.  If parents need to be eased into Shakespeare, they may want to use one of the countless graphic novel versions, an alternative study method apart from more didactic texts and the original scripts.  And there are countless imaginative films spanning the history of cinema to use as teaching (and learning) tools as well.

Yes, this is a real book

By sheer coincidence, How To Teach Your Children Shakespeare was published just weeks before, of all things, William Shakespeare’s Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope by Ian Doescher (Quirk Books, $14.95) a scene-by-scene rewrite of George Lucas’s Episode IV rendered in iambic pentameter. While it’s far from the first work to mingle Shakespearean style and more modern stories (I saw a quite entertaining Tarantino travesty, Pulp Shakespeare, last summer at the New York International Fringe Festival; here’s a clip), it’s a solidly accomplished piece of work, which, like Ludwig’s curriculum, place its emphasis on language. It’s witty, but never anachronistic just for a laugh. It’s hard to tell whether it’s actually stage-worthy (I can imagine countless Shakespeare troupes racing to acquire performance rights, at least for readings or benefits, but this trailer doesn’t inspire confidence), but for the sci-fi geek who’s also a Shakespeare nerd (there are probably plenty), it’s a fun read. Purists will note that the slim volume is clearly not drawn from George Lucas’s First Folio, as it includes scenes with Jabba the Hutt which were not in the original 1977 film release, but rather in the much-later digital makeover; this version also fudges whether Han or Greedo shot first.

The Shakespeare-Star Wars mash-up might be just a lark for most (I particularly enjoyed R2-D2 proffering fully articulated asides to the audience while his companions hear only “meeps” and “beeps), but I wonder whether it might be another tool in the Shakespeare educational kit. If children and teens know Star Wars well, but are Shakespeare novices, this book might serve to teach them “Shakespeare as a second language,” since the faux-vintage language tracks so closely with the film. I don’t mean to suggest that Doescher’s gloss is equal to the Bard’s words, but especially for tweens and teens, it might be a helpful gateway text.

From the recent production by NYC’s The Shakespeare Forum

It is perhaps ironic that I’ve grown to like Shakespeare so much, because I don’t take any particular pleasure in reading him. It’s not a chore by any means, but I don’t pick up my hefty Oxford compendium of a Sunday morning for fun – it’s a reference tool. For me, the playing is all. As a result, while I know any number of the Bard’s plays rather well (in addition to numerous productions of the standard repertoire, I’ve seen no less than three Timon of Athens and three Cymbelines), I also have huge gaps in the canon, one of which was filled only two days ago when I saw The Shakespeare Forum’s production of Love’s Labour’s Lost.

For the first time in many years, I encountered a Shakespeare play that was wholly new to me. I was actually a bit concerned early on in the production, as I wasn’t immediately grasping the plot and the words weren’t even distant echoes of an ill-remembered prior production. For the very first time, I found myself wondering whether I should have read up on a Shakespeare play before seeing it; maybe my youthful defiance of my mother’s teaching tool was ill-placed.

But as I settled in with this alien story, it became clearer; flotsam of my Shakespeare knowledge took hold as I pondered whether Holofernes was written as a female role, as played in this production, and the play within the play echoed (actually, prefigured) the Pyramus and Thisbe scene in Midsummer’s Act V. Did I get every word, every plot point, every allusion? I sincerely doubt it, but that’s because I was a stranger in a strange land for the first time in a long time; since my exposure to LLL isn’t regulated at 50 year intervals, I’ll glean more from the next encounter, which will come in only weeks, with the new musical version set to debut at The Public Theatre’s Shakespeare in the Park.

I have to say that in the case of Shakespeare, familiarity breeds not contempt, but respect and appreciation, and there’s no single way to achieve that knowledge (a close friend and Shakespeare fan uses recordings of the plays as a nightly sleep aid, which I can’t imagine). I do think it can come too soon (impenetrable Shakespeare surely builds up cognitive antibodies to fight off the Bard), but never too late.  Whatever the method, I suspect that anyone can come to enjoy, and even love, all of those words, words, words. I just wish I had been able to share them with my mom.

I am not a Pollyanna about the continuing challenges of racial inequality and prejudice in this country and around the world. I fear that mankind’s seemingly inexhaustible capacity and compulsion to define an “other” is so deeply seated that it will take many more generations to eradicate, largely through what futurists and fantasists predict to be an eventual blending of all races. I will not live to see that day.

But I thought we were above this sort of thing in the arts, at least insofar as exploiting racial differences go. But with this morning’s announcement of a new Broadway production of Romeo and Juliet, featuring Orlando Bloom and Condola Rashad as the famed lovers, I find that neither the press nor those associated with the show are able to simply announce their production and its fine cast. Instead, words like “interracial” and “mixed race” pepper nearly every article I’ve seen since I first learned of the production; whether that is by design of the producers or the reaction of the press is difficult to parse. The director has already been quoted speaking about wanting to emphasize the division of the Montagues and Capulets through his casting; he notes that he didn’t start with the intent of separating the warring families along racial lines, but that it evolved once his leads were selected.

Why is calling out the racial element necessary, I wonder, especially at the very moment the show is made public. They’ve announced with poster art in place, so it’s fairly self-evident that Bloom is white and Rashad is black. The casting of the veteran actor Joe Morton as Lord Capulet is also noted. Do we need to have this color divide spelled out for us? I tend to think we would do well to discover it when we see the show, or simply become more aware as more casting announcements ensue. Certainly it’s something for feature stories closer to the opening.

I am, emphatically, not arguing against the show artistically in any way. It’s a perfectly valid approach and I look forward to seeing what David Leveaux does with it. I’m especially eager to see Rashad because she’s such a compelling actor and I want to watch her career and talent grow.  It’s the racial emphasis of the initial news that concerns and surprises me, and it’s interesting to note that it has overwhelmed the observation that the actor playing Romeo is 35, which might otherwise draw attention.

Color-blind and color-specific casting has been used for years, especially with Shakespeare. At Hartford Stage in 1987, I did press for a production where a white Pericles married a black Thaisa, who was the child of a Latino father; Pericles and Thaisa’s child Marina was played by an Asian American actress. A year later, Jim Simpson, now of The Flea Theatre, directed a stage adaptation of Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons in which the gentry were white and the serfs black, to bring home the class divisions viscerally for modern audiences; it was not in the text. That was a quarter century ago. I recall a Pygmalion at Yale Rep with an African-American Eliza. Just last year in a glorious As You Like It, Lily Rabe, Andre Braugher and Omar Metwally were among the denizens of Arden for The Public Theatre, all of different racial heritage, yet it mattered not a whit; in 2007 The Public offered us a Latino Romeo portrayed by Oscar Isaac.  I’m sure there are countless other examples, which escape me only in the haste of my writing.

There are those who cling to ideas of what is historically correct with Shakespeare, but his work was both a product of its day and at times anachronistic unto itself (i.e. mentions of clocks in Julius Caesar). “Purity” would require the use of original pronunciation and all-male casts, both of which are rarely employed; I say anything goes if it is true to the text and illuminates the play. I reject narrow-mindedness.

But when it is instantly obvious to anyone with a knowledge of the actors already announced that the show is being cast along racial lines, and when there is imagery to point that out to the unaware, why must that be the beginning of every story? If Will & Grace, Modern Family and Ellen are now cited as leading Americans to greater acceptance of marriage equality, can’t the arts explore racial themes without using them as a marketing ploy? After 400 years, we all certainly know that the youthful protagonists die, in no small part because of the clannish enmity between their families; we’ll see that transposed in this production onto racial lines and yet, presumably, the message remains the same – the prejudices of parents must be eradicated, for the sake of children’s happiness and the betterment of society.

Talk to me about Orlando Bloom’s Broadway debut. Rhapsodize over Rashad’s talented family. Praise the acumen of the director. Embrace the timeless story of lovers separated by foolish divisions. But don’t parade out “interracial” and “mixed-race” as if such a casting idea is new to the stage, even when employed in a work where it is neither explicit or implicit in the text. In doing so, there is the risk of suggesting not how acceptable it is or should be, but rather that it is still something remarkable or strange. Frankly, I’d be thrilled if someone actually got to the show with no knowledge of the racial element, and discovered how it, perhaps, serves to bring the drama home, especially if it runs against their own expectations or prejudices.

“Mixed” romances and marriages, whether racial, religious, or based in some other bias, are certainly not fully accepted in every corner of this country or the world, but we are 40+ years past Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner.  Sell me this Romeo and Juliet on its many merits, not by suggesting that it will be heightened by a portrayal of racial enmity. Let’s show the way in our art, not exploit retrograde ideas in our rhetoric.

Sanjay at Froghammer must be so proud. You remember Froghammer, the firm brought in by the New Burbage Festival to shake up its advertising and audiences, to cast off their stodgy image. So bold, so vibrant. Oh yes, and (spoiler alert) in that scenario, a fraud.

It’s hard not to recall this fictional scenario, from the ever-brilliant Canadian TV series Slings and Arrows, as the venerable Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Canada drops the middle word from its name…again, having jettisoned it in the 1970s and restored it in 2007. In the words of Stratford’s new artistic director Antoni Cimolino, who assumed his new post officially today, the name “is simple and direct, it resonates with people and it carries our legacy of quality and success.” It also eradicates the name of Shakespeare in the general promotion of the festival. How that plays out on its stages, and its materials, will be seen in the seasons to come.

Stratford is hardly the first theatre to diminish The Bard’s name. Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival began to transition as its Lafayette Street home became prominent and rose to co-billing in the portmanteau Joseph Papp’s The Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival, which later gave way simply to The Public Theater (which still produces Shakespeare in the Park, a catch-all that has included Comden & Green and Bernstein, Sondheim, and Ragni, Rado & McDermott in more recent summers).

Even the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut, as it drew its last breaths in the late 1980s, rebranded as the American Festival Theatre, as generic a company identity as one could ask for but hey, doesn’t everybody love a festival? It left in its wake an assortment of Shakespearean named businesses around it, which survived for years, despite the closure of the town’s major claim to the name.

Professionally, for these companies, the rebranding is rooted in solid marketing theory. In the case of the two going concerns, they have grown beyond being solely Shakespearean companies, though it’s worth noting that the Shaw Festival has not yet renounced old G.B., even as it has expanded its own repertoire. If Shakespeare is less prominent on the stage, perhaps it is best to not fly him as the company banner, especially since conventional wisdom holds that many people find the works of the playwright to be difficult and off-putting, a perception aided by years of dull literature teachers in secondary schools. If your name is a misrepresentation or worse a deterrent, business sense dictates that you remove the obstruction; when I was executive director of The O’Neill Theater Center, I quickly moved to rework the company’s logo after multiple people told me stories about its caricature of Eugene being frequently mistaken for Hitler.

While these demotions of old Will are extremely prominent, he’s not about to disappear from the North American consciousness. His works are omnipresent thanks to their eternal brilliance, as well as the added bonus of their being in the public domain, free from royalties or restrictive heirs. Every summer, Shakespeare in the Parks blossom as far as the eye can see, not only in New York’s Central Park, especially his most arboreal works like A Midsummer Night’s Dream and As You Like It. And of course we need only look to England where his works, and tributes to it, are a perpetual Shakespearean festival of which they are justly proud.

But there’s no missing the fact that the companies perhaps most credited with popularizing and sustaining Shakespeare in North America in the latter half of the 20^th century have shrugged off their inspiration and their mascot, in the interest of sustaining themselves as centers of theatrical creativity. It’s hard to argue with that latter goal.  After all, when theatre is restricted, or beholden to a limited, outdated artistic palette, it atrophies and dies.

But for all the business sense it makes, I can’t help feeling a pang of loss as Shakespeare’s name gets excised. Once a befuddled high schooler, who came to love Shakespeare as I saw ever-better productions following a dire Julius Caesar in 9^th or 10^th grade, it seems a small but significant chip away at Bill’s rep in The New World. For the theatres, it’s crucial re-branding. For The Shakespeare Brand, it’s a crucial loss.

Another round to Sanjay. Fortunately, after 400 years, I think Shakespeare’s still ahead. For now.

[Update 11/2/12: This post has been updated to reflect that the Stratford Festival has now dropped Shakespeare from its name twice in its history, which was not clearly reflected in the initial press reports that prompted this post.]