Royal Shakespeare Company residency touches people throughout the state and region

Royal Shakespeare Company residency touches many people

EDITORS: A complete printed program of public events is available on request by calling (734) 764-7260. Attached is a list of interesting facts and story ideas that
ANN ARBOR—It was the Royal Shakespeare Company’s (RSC) commitment to education that struck a responsive chord with University of Michigan President Lee C. Bollinger and the University Musical Society (UMS) three years ago, when plans started to take shape for a U-M and RSC partnership.

“Shakespeare’s history plays are among his most intriguing and challenging works,” UMS President Kenneth C. Fischer said. “What the RSC was looking for was a place where the plays could be presented as a cycle, but also where their context and meaning could be fully explored. The RSC sees the U-M as the ideal place for all of these things to happen.”

As part of the RSC’s three-week
“I am delighted the University is working as a partner with the University Musical Society and the Royal Shakespeare Company to bring Shakespeare’s history plays to Ann Arbor,” Bollinger said. “The RSC’s Michigan residency will long be remembered, for sterling performances by this renowned theatrical company, as well as for the related educational and cultural programs that promise to inspire students and all those who love the performing arts and Shakespeare.”

More than 225 students are enrolled in the course “Staging History: Shakespeare on Legitimacy and Rebellion,” being coordinated by U-M English Prof. Ralph G. Williams, who has worked closely with the RSC in the months leading up to the productions. The lectures are open to the public.

“The project with the Royal Shakespeare Company is marvelous in two ways: It expands our horizons and experience and focuses our resources,” Williams said. “The RSC is arguably the best in the English-speaking world in classic drama. We are enriched by our ties with them, and have the chance to make possible in England the fulfillment of a cultural project there, which would have been incomplete without the resources the residency here provides.

“But equally wonderful has been the coordination of resources here. The University Musical Society is contributing its resources and expertise in mounting complex productions. Faculty from theatre, English, classics, and the Residential College are working together to prepare students for the experience of the productions. Likewise exciting is the bringing together of the University with the wider Ann Arbor community and other colleges in the state as we prepare for and experience the residency,” Williams added.

Residency highlights include keynote interviews with RSC Director Michael Boyd and Artistic Director Adrian Noble at 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. March 11 in Rackham Auditorium. Williams and Bollinger will conduct the interviews, which are free and open to the public.

The U-M’s Special Collections Library in the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library and the Bentley Historical Library have mounted exhibits as part of the residency. The exhibit at Hatcher, titled “Costuming Shakespeare’s History Plays,” is open through April 14 and features actual theatrical costumes as well as prints, photographs and drawings of a wide variety of costumes from productions of Shakespeare’s history plays since the late 18th century.

The Bentley exhibit, titled “Shakespeare on Campus,” on display through April, features images and documents that highlight the various theatrical, musical, dance and scholarly interpretations of Shakespeare’s works over the years by U-M drama groups and visiting professional performers and faculty. The Bentley exhibit includes an 1807 edition of “The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare” owned by John Monteith, one of the University’s founders.

Shakespeare’s history plays depict his own interpretation of England’s bloody and most turbulent period in history, with civil war leading to chaos and, ultimately, anarchy. The British press has described the RSC productions of these works as “full of hair-raising special effects and blood curdling combat, [while] never losing a word of the text.”

These plays and the historic period itself contain political back stabbing (and actual stabbings), war, revolt, rebellion, fleeting glory and counter plots, as well as love, lust and ghosts.

From stunning stage designs and costumes to ominous music and ingenious staging, the RSC brings to the U-M and southeast Michigan what Britain’s “The Independent” called the “Bard’s epic tale delivered with the clash of panache and buckets of blood.”

RSC Artistic Director Adrian Noble commented, “The RSC last performed in Michigan in 1913, during the company’s first ever visit to the United States with ‘Richard II,’ ‘Henry IV’ and ‘Henry V.’ I am certain that the four plays we stage in 2001 will be a theatrical tour de force, and I am delighted that The Histories are, once again, heralding the start of an important new partnership between the RSC and North America. I am deeply grateful for the support and vision of both the University Musical Society and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and look forward to equally exciting future projects.”

The history plays are presented in cycles with the first cycle beginning at 11 a.m.
A complete list of events, including those open to the public, can be found on the Web at http://www.umich.edu/pres/shakespeare/. Additional information is at the UMS Web site (http://www.ums.org/) and RSC Web site (http://www.rsc.org.uk/).

The plays are presented in provocative and contemporary theatrical interpretation.

RSC Associate Director Michael Boyd has described the rare 12-hour cycle of four history plays as “a lovely, mad, ambitious project.” The Ann Arbor performances are the only time the cycles will be presented in the United States.

Some facts and figures:

        •30 actors play 100 characters in these four productions of          Shakespeare’shistory plays.

        •200 costumes, with an average of seven changes per actor are used,          as are:                         • 5 severed heads.                         • 25 swords.                         • 100 pairs of shoes.                         • 5 pints of stage blood.                         • 979 hours of rehearsal.

        •Coincidentally, the RSC, UMS and the U-M football team all date          from 1879. The RSC was founded in 1879 as the Shakespeare Memorial          Theater and changed its name in 1961 to Royal Shakespeare Company.

Four Ann Arbor and U-M couples have been reading the history plays aloud to prepare for the productions. They share character interpretations by choosing names from a hat at the beginning of each act. Denise Park, professor of psychology and one of the participants, says, “Winters are very long in Ann Arbor. This has made it a lot more fun. This way we will really know what we are seeing. We are delighted the Shakespeare plays are here.”

During the performances some audience members will be seated on the stage. 156 seats are being brought from England for stage seating.

The production set design allows actors full use of the three-dimensional space for trapeze and aerial work.

Walt Harrison, president of the University of Hartford and former vice president for communications at the U-M, is coming from Connecticut to see the plays March 17-18. Harrison has seen 31 of Shakespeare’s 36 plays. The three “Henry VI” plays are among the five he hasn’t seen.

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•Stephen Greenblatt, professor of Shakespeare at Harvard University, will give a public lecture “Dreams of Kingship: Ghostly Terror in Shakespeare’s Richard III” 4-6 p.m. Feb. 19, Rackham Auditorium.

•Clare Venables, RSC’s director of education and new media, will discuss the challenge of presenting Shakespeare to modern audiences and in different regions and countries at Prof. Leigh Woods’ “History of Theater” class 1-2:30 p.m.
•Venables will lead a workshop on “Voice, Movement and Text” 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
•RSC actors and education staff and Detroit Cass Technical High School students will present a workshop 1-4 p.m. March 7 and noon-3 p.m. March 15 for a Wayne County Regional Education Service Agency distance-learning telecast.

•Venables will talk with students in dance and art history in U-M Prof. Beth Genne’s class “Visual Analysis and Theories of Perception” about how an actor and director create a specific visual image of a character and situation 3:30-5 p.m.
•A panel discussion “Engendering History: Women, Gender and Shakespeare’s History Plays” will be presented noon-2 p.m. March 9 in Assembly Hall, Rackham Building, in collaboration with the U-M’s Institute for Research on Women and Gender.

•Michigan Radio will present a special program “Henry VI: What You Need to Know,” featuring Ralph Williams and Michigan Radio Station Manager Donovan Reynolds, 8-9 p.m.
•A youth performance of “Richard III” will be held for grades 7-12 from area schools 6:30-9:30 p.m. March 9 at the Power Center.

•RSC Director Michael Boyd will be interviewed by Ralph Williams at 2 p.m. March 11. President Lee C. Bollinger will interview RSC Artistic Director Adrian Noble at 3 p.m. that day. Both interviews will be in Rackham Auditorium.

•RSC actors will work with students enrolled in “Shakespeare on the Stage,” taught by U-M drama Prof. Martin Walsh, 10 a.m.-noon March 15 in the U-M Residential College Auditorium. Students who have prepared scenes from “Henry VI” and “Richard III” will receive coaching.

•The secrets of creating and composing music for theater will be shared by RSC musicians 2-3:30 p.m. March 15 at the Special Collections Library, seventh floor, Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library.

•RSC education staff will share backstage stories, including how they create sets, tips on design and lighting, and how to arrange terrifying fight scenes 11 a.m.-3 p.m. March 13 and 9:30-11 a.m. March 15 at the Power Center.

•Sarah Esdaile, RSC associate director of the tetralogy, and U-M theater Prof. Leigh Woods will discuss “The Art of Acting and Directing Shakespeare” 4-5:30 p.m. March 16 at the U-M Alumni Center.

•Meet the RSC actors at an interview 2:30-3:30 p.m. March 18 in Rackham Auditorium.

•RSC actors will coach Eastern Michigan University students in EMU theater Prof. Kerry Graves’ acting workshop 2-4 p.m.
•RSC cast members will lead workshops on preparing for Shakespeare, text analysis, voice and movement, and production challenges 2-5 p.m. March 19 at St. Clair Community College, Port Huron.

•RSC actors and musicians will lead an acting workshop for approximately 50 young people in the Mosaic Youth Theater 6:30-8:30 p.m. March 19 at Historic Fort Wayne, Detroit.

•The RSC will hold a community acting workshop for professional actors 7-9 p.m. March 20 at the Performance Network, Ann Arbor.

•RSC actors and staff will lead workshops on scenery, text analysis and delivery 11 a.m.-3 p.m. March 21 at Wayne State University’s Theater Department.

•U-M Theatre Department Chair Erik Fredricksen will host an “open floor” with students and RSC actors 4:30-6 p.m. March 21 in the Arena Theater, Frieze Building.

Lee C. BollingerEnglishtheatreSpecial Collections Libraryhttp://www.umich.edu/pres/shakespeare/•