Anyone seen “Hamnet”? I was not too impressed by “Shakespeare in Love,” which perpetuated the biographical fallacy — that the key to unlocking the one, true meaning of a literary work is listing how each detail in a literary work “could represent” some detail in the author’s life, and that once you’ve constructed that list,…
On my ride into work yesterday, my mother mentioned “That popular singer has a song about a Shakespeare character.” I had seen social media posts about Taylor Swift’s “The Fate of Ophelia,” but hadn’t investigated yet. I watched the video right before teaching my “Shakespeare in Context” class, and I felt kind of overwhelmed. I…
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Fences was performed in the backyard of August Wilson’s boyhood home.
Pittsburgh Playwrights Theatre Company
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Five cameras, adding up to ~100 hours of footage. I’m almost at the halfway point of editing 35 short videos from the 2025 York Plays, presented in Toronto by a troupe of hundreds of performers in June. The event was a textually faithful but theatrically creative staging of some 50 plays that were performed as…
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A cast of hundreds participated in a public medieval re-enactment dramatizing the Christian story from Creation through Final Judgement at the University of Toronto a few weeks ago. I attended as the event videographer. I had at least three cameras running at all times — sometimes five — while a roving camera also caught the…
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I’ll be in Toronto next week to observe and document a full production of the York Corpus Christi Cycle. The event, which took place annually for hundreds of years in the streets of the medieval city of York, dramatizes the Christian salvation story from the creation of the universe to the final judgement. The plays,…
I had a great time playing Hastings in this audio adaptation of a classic Agatha Christie classic. A smart, young woman must “prove her wits” in order to find her uncle’s will and receive her inheritance. Does it count if she hires the world-renowned detective, Hercule Poirot? Find out when you listen to “The Missing…
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It has long been assumed that William Shakespeare’s marriage to Anne Hathaway was less than happy. He moved to London to pursue his theatrical career, leaving her in Stratford-upon-Avon and stipulating in his will that she would receive his “second best bed”, although still a valued item. Now a leading Shakespeare expert has analysed a…
I first taught Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle during an intensive 3-week online course during the 2020-21 winter break, during the Time of Covid. The nature of that course was such that I could only reasonably require students to read 6 of Wilson’s 10 plays; I think I required everyone to read 4, and then split the…
Rewatching ST:DS9 After the recap of last week’s “In Purgatory’s Shadow,” we see the Defiant, a couple of runabouts, and Dukat’s Bird of Prey lining up against the huge Dominion fleet. But instead of attacking, the invaders head for Cardassia which (we learn from an even smugger than usual Dukat) has joined the Dominion. In…
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Rewatching ST:DS9 In a cave (again with the caves) Sisko, in civilian clothes, seeks an informer, but is instead met by the rogue security officer Eddington, who uses the plight of the refugees in the cave to justify his treason against Starfleet. Eddington claims the moral high ground, but Sisko is unimpressed. Eddington beams away…