| Shakespeare in America BY MIKE UNGER Apple pie, baseball—and William Shakespeare? The iconic British playwright just might be more a part of American culture than you knew. Richard Paul certainly thinks so. The AU alum was commissioned by the Folger Shakespeare Library to produce a documentary series, Shakespeare in America, in commemoration of its 75th anniversary. Paul, not a Shakespeare fan going into the project, said he came away with an increased understanding of Shakespeare’s importance to our national fabric. “There was a huge fight amongst intellectuals after the Revolutionary War, for the next 50 or 60 years, about whether we should reject Shakespeare and create our own form of theatre,” Paul said. “The other side said Shakespeare represents all the best things about American culture. Ralph Waldo Emerson called him ‘The father of the man in America,’ meaning that Elizabethans were the people who founded America, therefore it was Shakespeare and people of his era who created America.” Paul spent more than two years researching and producing the shows, and the results can be heard in three standalone hour-long documentaries: Shakespeare in Performance, Shakespeare in Education and Civic Life, and Shakespeare in American Politics. The shows will be aired on WAMU May 8, 15, and 22 at 10 p.m., and distributed nationally by Public Radio International. Actor Sam Waterson serves as the narrator. “There are some amazing things that we found out in the process of making the documentary,” Paul said. “In the early years of American psychology, the person who was quoted the most in academic journals as an expert on the way the mind worked was Shakespeare. King Lear proves that mental illness can be brought about by an event. Nobody stopped to say, ‘Guys these are fictional characters.’” Even before the dawn of psychology in the 1850s, Shakespeare sat at the crossroads of race relations, according to Paul. “When slavery was abolished in New York in the 1820s, there was a guy who owned an ice cream parlor in Manhattan and he started putting on plays with African American actors,” Paul said. “The first play we have a record of being performed by African Americans was Richard III. The reviews suggest they did some amazing things. There was improvisation, which was unheard of in a Shakespeare performance at the time. The show became a huge hit and they moved it to a larger venue near a white theatre. The white theatre owner called the sheriff and had the African Americans arrested. It’s one of the earliest episodes of African American entrepreneurs taking on a white business.” Several Shakespeare trends, such as performing his plays outdoors, were popularized in the United States. “One of the voices who was most eloquent was [AU professor] Caleen Jennings, who spoke about color-blind casting,” Paul said. “The idea of color-blind casting was started by Joe Papp in Shakespeare in the Park [in New York’s Central Park]. He believed that we needed to reflect the diversity of American culture in the performance. He was very big on making sure that anybody could see a Shakespeare performance for free.” Paul believes the shows will appeal to a mass audience, not just to those already enamored with the man. “I certainly know a lot more about Shakespeare’s influence on American culture, but I also have developed an appreciation for Shakespeare’s language,” he said. “Hearing it performed by really great actors changed the way that I perceived Shakespeare. I was one of these people who just had to read it in high school and really hated it, but when you hear it performed by great actors, that’s the way you’re supposed to hear it.” For more information log on to folger.edu/americanlife. |
