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How Plagiarism Software Found a New Shakespeare Play – Yahoo! News

woodwardshakespeare — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:36:44 +0000

Plagiarism-detection software was created with lazy, sneaky college students in mind – not the likes of William Shakespeare. Yet the software may have settled a centuries-old mystery over the authorship of an unattributed play from the late 1500s called The Reign of Edward III. Literature scholars have long debated whether the play was written by Shakespeare – some bits are incredibly Bard-like, but others don’t resemble his style at all. The verdict, according to one expert: the play is likely a collaboration between Shakespeare and Thomas Kyd, another popular playwright of his time.

via How Plagiarism Software Found a New Shakespeare Play – Yahoo! News.

from Yahoo News.

Thanks to Jaguar Bennett for sending this news item in.

Our stories in other arts

woodwardshakespeare — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 03:58:36 +0000

We’re actors. We love to share our stories. We tend to feel that if you have enough of them at the end of a night, a run, or a life, then you’ve really lived.

But other people come to the Park on nights that we play and find their own ways of telling their stories.

Here is Bob Marcotte’s blog post about his evening photographing his experience in Woodward Park with our actors:

A Late Summer’s Night Made Glorious

Roles for Women. . . of all ages

woodwardshakespeare — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 00:45:09 +0000

Let our female stars act their age, McKellen demands

Playwrights accused of failing to create roles for mature women

By Arifa Akbar, Arts correspondent

Saturday, 6 June 2009 from the Independent UK

It is a complaint common among actresses of a certain age: the dearth of meaty roles for women over 40. Now the elder statesman of the theatre, Sir Ian McKellen, has joined the protesting chorus and urged playwrights to start penning interesting roles for older actresses if they want to attract bigger audiences.

In a broadside against the theatre and television industries, Sir Ian cited William Shakespeare as a playwright who knew how to create a captivating “older woman” character.

Sir Ian called for bigger and better roles to be created for mature women on stage and screen. In the light of increasingly “silver” audiences, it would pay to do so, he added in an interview with The Stage newspaper.

“It’s a familiar cry from women friends of my age – or younger,” he said. “It’s not fair that, particularly in the classics, although there are some great parts for older women, there aren’t nearly as many as there are for men in, say, Shakespeare. Judi Dench has really run out of parts to play in Shakespeare.”

Sir Ian said that those playwrights who had used women as prominent leads in their work had attracted huge audiences as a result.

“Look at Calendar Girls and Madame de Sade … Both are so popular – that is very telling. People might have thought ‘Who wants to see plays about older women?’ Well, the general public do. An awful lot of older women and gentleman go to the theatre, and the population is getting older.

“Plays about old age are perhaps going to be more popular than they used to be and that should help playwrights think, well, we can find some fabulous parts for the fabulous actresses there are around.”

Sir Ian said television commissioners are missing a trick if they discourage screenwriters from creating interesting character roles for women in middle age and beyond.

“If [commissioning editors] are just titillated by the stories young people have, they are missing out. If Shakespeare hadn’t been interested in older people and people in their prime, we would not have had Antony and Cleopatra, and many other characters. Everybody wants to see actresses like Judi Dench and Maggie Smith. It’s just up to people to provide them with the material to do so,” he said.

His words follow a campaign by the actors’ union Equity, which launched a petition in March calling on broadcasters to change their attitudes towards casting women in television.

“Over half the viewing public is female, yet in TV drama, for every female character there are two male characters,” the petition said.

“While leading parts are frequently played by male actors over 45, women in this age group start to disappear from our screens. The message this sends to viewers is distorted and distorting. We call on all the major UK television channels to take action to correct this imbalance.”

The petition has so far been signed by over 4,000 people including Simon Callow, Julie Walters and Imelda Staunton. The stage actress Margaret Tyzack, 77, who won the Olivier Award for best actress in March, said the roles offered to older women were “clichéd”.

The National Theatre will host a conference on women in theatre and film on Tuesday, to examine the “equal roles” issue.

In their prime: Or past their time?

*Faye Dunaway, 68, criticised film producers for denying older female actresses the chance to play major lead roles. “Why should I play sisters and mothers, while guys like Jack [Nicholson] and Clint [Eastwood], who are older than me, have on-screen lovers half their age?”

*Alex Kingston, 46, blamed ageism when she learnt five years ago that her seven-year tenure on the US hospital drama ER was about to end. “Apparently, according to the producers and the writers, I am part of the old fogeys who are no longer interesting,” she said.

*A decade ago Sharon Stone, 51, reflected on her attendance at the Academy Awards, saying: “When I went to the Oscars it was like, ‘Oh, there has been an archaeological dig and look what we have found: a 40-year-old’.”

*Demi Moore, 45, has said: “There aren’t that many good roles for women over the age of 40. A lot of them don’t have much substance, other than being someone’s mother or wife.”

submitted by hdp

Shakespeare’s First Theatre Found

woodwardshakespeare — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 23:18:24 +0000

from the bbc.com

Archaeologists believe they have unearthed the remains of Shakespeare’s first theatre, the BBC has learned. A team from the Museum of London found the remains of the theatre in Shoreditch last summer. Built in 1576, it is thought the Bard acted there and that it also hosted the premiere of Romeo and Juliet. Taryn Nixon, from the Museum of London, said her team had found part of the original curved wall of the playhouse, which was believed to be polygonal in shape.

A metre and a half below street level, it has also uncovered the gravel surface, gently sloping down towards the stage, where the bulk of the audience would have stood. But the archaeologists fear the stage itself may be buried underneath a housing development. Ms Nixon told the BBC the theatre was built in what were known as “the suburbs of sin” just outside the city.

“The Lord Mayor actually passed a decree that there shouldn’t be any theatrical performances in the city… so just on the edge of the city is actually, classically, where you find all the slightly wilder, slightly more fun activities going on,” she said. Finds made within the gravel yard include a fragment of 16th-century pottery featuring the image of a man with beard and ruff.

The theatre was constructed by James Burbage, possibly using bricks from an old priory.

It is thought to have played host to Shakespeare’s theatre company, the Chamberlain’s Men. About 25 years after it was built, it was dismantled and moved timber by timber to construct the Globe Theatre on the South Bank of the Thames. In the 1990s the Globe was recreated on a site nearby.

Penny Tuerk, from the Tower Theatre Company, said Romeo and Juliet and an early version of Hamlet were thought to have been performed at the excavated site, as were some of Shakespeare’s comedies, like A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “There was a huge appetite for theatre at the time,” she said. “People were flocking into the theatres and they would have grabbed anything that they could and put it on to please the crowds.”

The site is now owned by the Tower Theatre Company. It plans to preserve the architecture in situ and construct a new playhouse around it which will open in 2012. Ms Tuerk said it would be a 21st Century equivalent of the original playhouse – a “no frills, hard-working place of entertainment” – that would bring London theatre “back to its roots”.

“Imagine actors in the future crossing the theatre and perhaps paying homage to Shakespeare as they go on stage for luck,” she added.

Portrait of Shakespeare Unveiled, 399 Years Late – The Lede Blog – NYTimes.com

woodwardshakespeare — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 20:12:58 +0000

Portrait of Shakespeare Unveiled, 399 Years Late – The Lede Blog – NYTimes.com.

After major rounds of tests, it seems as though this portrait is, in fact, a portrait painted of Shakespeare DURING his lifetime and is therefore considered to be a truer representation of what he actually looked like.

It’s like something out of a TV show. . .

woodwardshakespeare — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 23:11:52 +0000

This item from the BBC online explains a bit of trivia about the recent RSC production of “Hamlet”. The story is oddly similar to the fictional account of Oliver Wells willing his skull to the New Burbage Festival in the Canadian TV Show, “Slings and Arrows“. ~Heather

Human skull abandoned by Hamlet

David Tennant rehearsing with a replica skull

A human skull will no longer appear in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Hamlet as it may distract the audience, the company has said.

The skull of concert pianist and Holocaust survivor Andre Tchaikowsky has appeared in the Stratford production, starring David Tennant.

It was his dying wish to have his skull used in Hamlet and he bequeathed it to the RSC.

But the company says a fake skull will be used when it transfers to London.

Tennant was the first actor to use Mr Tchaikowsky’s skull during Hamlet’s famous grave-digger scene.

Audiences in Stratford were unaware the skull belonged to the Oxford pianist, but the secret was revealed by Tennant.

The RSC told Channel 4 News that now the secret was out, it would be “too distracting for the audience” if the skull was used.

Mr Tchaikowsky was devoted to Shakespeare, often visiting Stratford-Upon-Avon to see performances of his plays.

He died of cancer at the age of 46 in 1982 and donated his organs to medical research, with the exception of his skull.

from the Bardosphere: October 12

woodwardshakespeare — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 20:07:09 +0000

The Simpsons Go Shakespearean

Bard’s genius slips through prison bars
The Seattle Times

And Helen Mirren has been tapped to play Prospero(a) in a screen version of The Tempest currently in production under helms-woman, Julie Taymore (director of “Frida” and writer of “Across the Universe”). Set amid the persecution of female alchemists in the 16th and 17th centuries, the film is also slated to star Jeremy Irons, Alfred Molina, and Geoffrey Rush. The film is currently in pre-production and is expected to release in the fall of 2009.
~Source: Internet Movie Database.

"Miranda" by 19th century pre-Raphaelite master JW Waterhouse

from the Bardosphere: Week of September 15

woodwardshakespeare — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 02:00:37 +0000

The outdoor theatre at the Getty Villa deals with a noisy neighbor, too!
NY Times, September 12, 2008

A recent interview by the Guardian UK with playwright Tom Stoppard

And the talk about David Mamet’s ‘conversion’ to Conservativism continues at the following blogs and with his revisionist take on his play, “Speed the Plow”:

http://bubblegum-cinephile.blogspot.com/2008/09/big-knife-in-gray-lady.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2008/mar/13/davidmamet

http://www.georgehunka.com/blog/index.cgi/2008/09/08#nytimes_080908

from the Bardosphere: Week of September 8

woodwardshakespeare — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 01:25:47 +0000

Talking Point at The Next Stage: Bertholt Brecht

A couple of articles on how young artists get established:
Theatre Ideas
Lyn Gardner @ the Guardian UK

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival Commissions a ten-year, 37-play American History Cycle.

English poet strikes back with Shakespeare when her poem is banned

Nelson’s new play How Shakespeare Won the West a “darkish Valentine to the theatre.”

Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet in 1899.

Online Reading for the Week of Sept 1st.

woodwardshakespeare — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 01:00:46 +0000

A few articles from around the Bardosphere we found interesting this week:

Why Amateur No Longer Means Amateurish. . . . Guardian UK
Amateur v. Pro: does it matter anymore?

Smells Like Teen Spirit at the National. . . . . Guardian UK
Are cheap tickets enough to draw young people to the theatre?

Shakespeare Playhouse Uncovered in Shoreditch. . . . Telegraph.co.uk
Remnants of The Theatre pinpoints the location of the first official theatre in London.

And our fun Shakespeare Site this week: The Folger Shakespeare Library