It's Shakespeare's 'Hamlet,' but not as you know it
With praise for his "Hamlet" with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2016 still ringing in his ears — and the plum job of artistic director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington D.C. awaiting him in August — Simon Godwin is an undoubted darling ...
To black up or not to black up for 'Othello,' that is the question
As a Tokyo theater offers another Othello in blackface, Baye McNeil argues that breaking out the shoe polish is the laziest yet most problematic option.
World was a stage for acclaimed theater director Yukio Ninagawa
Acclaimed stage director Yukio Ninagawa was a titan of global theater but his hand felt astonishingly fragile when I shook it in delight in 2012 after the world premiere of "Trojan Women," which brought together a remarkable ensemble of Japanese, Arab-Israeli and Jewish-Israeli actors. Ninagawa, ...
In search of Japan's own Shakespeare
April 23 marked the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare (1564-1616), the greatest dramatist of the English speaking world. The anniversary has a particular resonance here: Few countries in the world have embraced Shakespeare with Japan's sustained passion. The Bard in Japan: William ...
Saluting Shakespeare's scientific legacy
On April 23, the literary world marks the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare. It's a good excuse for a lot of fuss: Britain's Royal Mint has produced a new £2 coin, the postal service has prepared a set of commemorative stamps ...
A British magazine has published an image of a figure that it says is the first and only known demonstrably authentic portrait of William Shakespeare made in his lifetime. The picture, of a young, bearded man wearing a Roman-style laurel crown and holding an ear ...
'Coriolanus' comes home — to Kyoto
It's a fair bet that many people at the Globe Theatre in London last May expected the Kyoto-based Chiten (Point) Company to present a stereotypically Japanese, samurai-style "Coriolanus," complete with taiko drums and period armor. Instead, however, Japan's contribution to the theater's Globe to Globe ...
