Colorado Shakespeare Festival

All the world’s a stage for William Shakespeare

Kylie Clarke — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 21:32:57 +0000

All the world’s a stage for William Shakespeare Kylie Clarke Wed, 11/26/2025 - 14:32

Alexandra Phelps

With the Nov. 26 cinematic release of Hamnet, CU Boulder scholars consider what we actually know about the famed playwright and why we’re still reading him four centuries later

Act One: Setting the scene

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.” The legacy and legend of William Shakespeare has expanded well beyond the open-air theaters of Renaissance London. Embedded in classrooms, films and novels, his plays and poetry have become universally known and loved. Before he inspired generations of artists, however, he was inspired by the art around him. Adapting the stories and dramas he observed and experienced, his storytelling has entertained viewers and readers for four centuries.

However, his dramas are mostly what we have left of him.

“The wealth of beautiful and deep feeling poetry and drama that Shakespeare left, contrasted with the poverty of documents that give us a sense of who he is as a person, is very intriguing” explains Dianne Mitchell, a �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder assistant professor of English and Renaissance literature scholar. This poverty has led scholars and writers, including bestselling author Maggie O’Farrell, to imagine what the lives of Shakespeare and his family may have been like.

In her 2020 novel Hamnet, a film adaptation of which will be released in theaters today (Nov. 26), O’Farrell weaves a plot following Shakespeare and his wife – referred to in the novel and film as Agnes – and their children, twins Judith and Hamnet and their older sister Susanna, creating a domestic view of their lives in Stratford. Based on the sparse information about Shakespeare available through legal documents, O’Farrell spins a fictional tale of loss, love and the family of one of the world’s most influential playwrights.

Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare in Hamnet. Image provided by Focus Features

Meet the Shakespeare scholars

Scene One: Finding a love

Enter Dianne Mitchell, Katherine Eggert, Kevin Rich, Heidi Schmidt, & Amanda Giguere

At CU Boulder, Shakespeare’s work is integral both in English classrooms and on stages. Scholars of literature and theater, as well as organizers of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival (CSF), found a love for Shakespeare’s work which now guides their professional careers.

Katherine Eggert

Katherine Eggert, a professor of English and vice chancellor and senior vice provost for academic planning and assessment, remembers, “I was going to study Victorian literature in graduate school, but then I took a class from Stephen Greenblatt, who is one of the world’s most famous Shakespeare scholars, and I knew that I could not leave the Renaissance behind.”

Eggert, drawing on her work on Renaissance epistemology – understanding how it is possible we know things and not others – and Renaissance history, explains, “We know a great deal about Shakespeare’s dealings in property, his legal involvements, we know whether he paid his taxes. We know the kinds of records that get kept in life. We do not have his diaries; we do not have his private remarks about what he thought about any given subject. What we do have is his literary work.”

Dianne Mitchell

For Dianne Mitchell, literary work and poetry of the Renaissance in particular spoke to her. “I had some great teachers when I was an undergraduate who really brought the 16th and 17th century literary world to life, especially poetry. I hadn’t realized how sensual and how deep the poetry felt.” Mitchell, among the other classes she teaches, developed an upper-level English course that is cross-listed with women and gender studies called Sex in Shakespeare’s Time. She reflects that students are “often surprised how up front both real women and imaginary women can be about what it is that they can and don’t desire.”

Kevin Rich

The stage is another way people find new ways to look at texts and themselves. For Kevin Rich, associate professor of theater and director of the Applied Shakespeare graduate certificate, theater offered him a place to conquer his fear of speaking. He remembers, “I was at a summer camp junior year of high school and they said do something that scares you, and I said acting scares me. I always wanted to be a teacher and once I found acting, I knew what I wanted to teach.”

Later, he saw a six-person production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It on a basketball court in New York City’s lower east side and “it was magical. It was awesome. Kids who were coming to play basketball saw that a play was happening and sat on their basketballs and watched it,” he recalls.

Heidi Schmidt

For Heidi Schmidt, a director and teacher with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, it was the connections she made rather than the setting of a theater that drew her in. “I really liked theater people. When I started hanging around theater people there was this relief that I could just be more of myself than I was in the rest of my life.” Now involved in every aspect of the theater, she works alongside Rich and Amanda Giguere, CSF director of outreach, to develop the CSF school program.

Amanda Giguere

Amanda Giguere found theater at a young age at a Shakespeare camp: “It planted the seed and now this is my life’s work.” When she was choosing a graduate school, “I applied to one school, CU Boulder, sight unseen … because of its connection to the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. Twenty-one years later, I’m still here.” Her book, Shakespeare & Violence Prevention: A Practical Handbook for Educators, allows teachers all over the country to use CSF’s teaching and practices in their classrooms.

In the five years since its publication and adaptation to film, the novel has grown a wider audience interested in imagining who Shakespeare could have been. Although scholars often try – to varying degrees of success – to explain Shakespeare the person, it is often novelists and playwrights like Shakespeare who bring him most to life. Through his plays, Shakespeare has touched audiences by interpreting the world he experienced through his writing.

Many �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder Shakespeare scholars and Colorado Shakespeare Festival (CSF) drama researchers are excited for the film adaptation of Hamnet. This film offers another insight into what Shakespeare could have been, beyond the dramas he created.

Act Two: Teaching Shakespeare

Enter CU Boulder’s Dianne Mitchell, Katherine Eggert, Kevin Rich, Heidi Schmidt and Amanda Giguere

“Shakespeare’s plays can be a way to think through questions that students themselves are asking, and we don’t only need Shakespeare to help us answer these questions. But it’s funny how much he is wondering about some of the same issues many of my students are wondering about or exploring some of the same problems that beset them,” says Mitchell.

Part of Shakespeare’s brilliance is his ability to reach people at any age. Kevin Rich, an associate professor of Theatre at CU Boulder, remembers seeing “a 4-year-old perform a Cleopatra monologue (from Antony and Cleopatra). You would think that’s too hard, but at that age, they’re not afraid of words yet – all words are new. This language was not intimidating and she killed it. She was so brave and let the words be as big as they were. That’s when I realized no age is too young to be introduced to these plays, and you’ll always learn more as you get older.”

Eggert emphasizes the importance of reading the text aloud in English courses: “I do ask students to read in class. I think it’s really important to hear Shakespeare and to hear the language coming out of your mouth and not just as a professional. When you read Renaissance literature – not just Shakespeare – and literature of any kind aloud, you understand it in your ear, even if you don’t understand every word on the page.”

Act Three: Favorite plays

Everybody reads Shakespeare differently, allowing for individuals to connect with his works in different ways.

Schmidt, for example, recalls a time at a camp where she was directing Measure for Measure. The play is about a duke who lets the affairs of state slide and instead of handling them, claims he’s going on sabbatical. However, he doesn’t and sticks around in disguise, observing as people get manipulated by his deputy.

“I said, ‘OK, let’s just agree as a group that tricking someone into having sex with someone they don’t want to is bad. Period, the end,’” Schmidt says. “The youngest kid in the class, 13, puts her hand in the air and shouts, ‘Consent is sexy!’ It was one of my proudest teaching moments.”

Giguere recognizes the power in drawing connections between historical events and the situations Shakespeare portrays in his stories.” Tyrant by Stephen Greenblatt is about the tyrants in Shakespeare’s plays. I’m on the section on Richard III, and I’m thinking about how it shows what happens when hate is allowed to grow and fester. It’s crazy that Richard III became king, that’s sort of baffling.”

Rich sees great power in how Shakespeare can capture human conditions in social and emotional situations, recalling, “I’ve had an inmate say to me, ‘Shakespeare had to have done time,’ because he cannot have written the prison scene in Richard II without having spent time in a cell himself. I’ve had veterans say he had to have been in war, because he cannot have possibly written about war like he does without having experienced it. So, maybe that’s true or maybe he was just that empathetic, that able to imagine perspectives other than his own.”

Mitchell reflects, “I’ve started teaching one of Shakespeare’s late plays — by which I mean a play that he wrote at the end of his dramatic career — both at the undergraduate and graduate level. It’s a play called Cymbeline. One of the reasons [I like teaching it] is that students have no expectations about the play and its characters when they come into my class. I like teaching it because you really see a Shakespeare at the end of his career who is so confident in his dramatic abilities that he starts breaking all the rules. It’s really fun to watch him discard habits that he practices in some of his more canonical plays.”

Eggert finds that familiarity can generate new insights. She says, “The play I most like to teach, that’s Hamlet. It’s infinitely rich and even if students have already read it before, there is so much to discover on the second, third and 20th reading.” Whether a student is completely new to a play or reading it again, there are so many meaningful ways for them to interact with the text.

Act Four: Hamnet as a novel and a stage play

Giguere and Schmidt both saw the first stage adaptation of Hamnet at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. Prior to seeing it, Giguere read the novel and was pleased that even though the novel takes a lot of liberties with who Shakespeare’s wife was, they are “beautiful liberties.”

O’Farrell’s novel, despite being about Shakespeare, leans more deeply into the lives of Agnes and his children than other novelists and scholars have. Often villainized in history, Agnes in the novel is shown in a new light. There is much speculation about the circumstances around her and William Shakespeare’s marriage, Eggert disputes some scholars’ insinuations that since she was older than he and was pregnant, she trapped him in a marriage that he didn’t want. This has led to a fictional narrative in which the two lived separate lives, and Shakespeare moved to London to escape her.

Eggert emphasizes that there is no evidence that supports this theory. In fact, she says, “just a few months ago, a scholar made a good case that a letter found in an old book that had been owned by an acquaintance of Shakespeare’s, used as part of the binding of this book, was written to Shakespeare’s wife, and the letter was to her in London. While this letter doesn’t indicate the entirety of their relationship dynamic, it displays that their lives weren’t as separate as some scholars would want them to be.”

Mitchell describes the importance of centering a story around women, especially beside a character as large as Shakespeare. Instead of imagining Agnes’ life as small in comparison to Shakespeare’s, “One of the things that I liked about the novel was that it’s not about Shakespeare and his rise to fame and success, but rather about the domestic life of the intelligent and deep-feeling woman he married. We don’t have diaries or letters, so fiction is doing the work (of defining) that (Agnes) wasn’t some small person who wasn’t cared for and who was just kind of caught up in the Shakespeare industry. She has her own important life.”

Mitchell explains that the villainization of Agnes’ character could possibly stem from a thoughtful act William Shakespeare and his wife did. Many scholars use the fact that the couple didn’t get married in the local parish church to diminish her character since this act was violating the religious conventions at the time. However, at the time they got married, Shakespeare’s father, John – a cruel character in the novel – was being pursued for his debts. Instead of getting married in the church, where people would have seen him and tried to collect, William and Agnes married elsewhere as a kindness to William’s father.

Act Five: Hamnet as a film

There are many films that have captured, or attempted to capture, the plays and fictionalized life of Shakespeare. Movies such as Shakespeare in Love offer viewers a way to enter his life, even if it’s heavily fictionalized. Films are often one of the most important tools used by professors, including Eggert. Films about Shakespeare or his plays allow viewers to better understand the content, through observing the choices actors and directors make.

“I show clips from films and theater adaptations; there are resources through the [�Թ�� of Colorado Boulder’s] libraries where you can see how if something is performed slightly differently, it emphasizes an entirely different meaning to the text,” Eggert says.

Although there are fictionalized elements, the stage adaptation of Hamnet was another way for viewers to understand Shakespeare and England at the time. The stage adaptation included people of various ethnic and racial backgrounds, something Schmidt notes was a larger part of Shakespeare’s London than people often consider.

Colorado Shakespeare Festival remains popular

The Colorado Shakespeare Festival program has reached more than 140,000 Colorado students and continues to be an integral part of English courses in college. For this school cycle, Rich has adapted Hamlet into a digestible 30-minute and 45-minute play, depending on the student audience. Giguere and Schmidt’s work allows for teachers to prep their students on the plots, background and characters in the plays. Similarly to Rich’s opinion that anyone can interact with the material, Giguere states, “I don’t think you need to be a professional actor or violence prevention expert to use Shakespeare’s plays to think about patterns of violence. I think the plays unlock a lot about our own world and help us understand what it means to be human and what it means to live in a society.

“There is a lot of research that exists about how London, in particular, is a lot more diverse than we like to think it was – it was not all white. There were a lot of different people coming from all over the world and living in London and making their lives in London. I think [an all-white version of London] is an outdated and disproven illusion of what life looked like,” Schmidt says.

Rich adds that the landscape in theatre for interpreting Shakespeare has moved beyond a binary system of comedy and tragedy. “When I was first starting out as an actor, auditioning for companies, they would ask for two contrasting monologues – one comedic, one tragic. It seems that many have moved away from that because that creates a two dimensional view of his plays, which in reality are more than just two genres of comedies and tragedies. He finds levity in serious moments and he finds gravity in the funny moments.”

The film version of Hamnet continues to break down these binaries and established structures through its storytelling. The mysticism that Rich sees in Shakespeare’s work is what Giguere recognizes in O’Farrell’s novel. Some film viewers may recognize the mysticism of the novel while also seeing the humanity of Shakespeare and his family.

Some 400 years later, Shakespeare can connect with individuals on a number of levels. Hamnet’s release in theaters offers viewers a fictionalized way to see him as a person and one version of the life he could have led. However, the concrete things people know about Shakespeare’s storytelling and genius are found in his works. Giguere emphasizes that people should read “all of them. Truly, every Shakespeare play collides with you in different ways depending on where you are in life or what the world is doing. I say this in a tongue-and-cheek way, read all of them, watch all of them. Because that’s what baffles me about these works, is that sometimes you’ll collide with a play and it just hits you in the right way where, ‘Oh my goodness, this sheds light on this other aspect of my life.’”

They Exit (the movie theater)

With the Nov. 26 cinematic release of Hamnet, CU Boulder scholars consider what we actually know about the famed playwright and why we’re still reading him four centuries later.

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Image provided by Focus Features

Making it so

Anonymous — Mon, 09 Oct 2023 22:03:23 +0000

Making it so Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/09/2023 - 16:03

Bradley Worrell

Patrick Stewart of Star Trek (and Shakespeare) fame shared his wit and wisdom Saturday with attendees at the Glenn Miller Ballroom on the CU Boulder campus as part of national book tour

Whether you knew it or not, Saturday was a special day in Colorado. That’s because Colorado Gov. Jared Polis issued an official proclamation naming Oct. 7 as “Patrick Stewart Day.”

The governor presented the citation to the actor of stage and screen fame on Saturday before a capacity crowd at the Glenn Miller Ballroom on the �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder campus, where Stewart was appearing as part of a national book tour to promote his new memoir, Making It So.

Polis told the audience he issued the proclamation because of Stewart’s accomplishments as an actor and philanthropist, as well as an advocate against domestic violence and for women’s rights and the LGBT community.

“When it comes to declaring a day in honor of a true icon and hero to many, we must ‘Make It So,’” declared the governor, who is widely known for his love of science fiction and fantasy books and movies. His proclamation drew cheers from the capacity audience.

At the conclusion of Patrick Stewart’s talk at the Glenn Miller Ballroom on Saturday, fans of Stewart’s posed for a picture in front of the stage holding free copies of his memoir provided by the Boulder Book Store.

Tim Orr, producing artistic director of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, led Stewart through a 45-plus-minute conversation touching on his upbringing in rural Yorkshire, England; how he got started in regional theater and his time performing as a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company; his success in TV and films; and his decision to write a memoir.

“I read your book and I loved it,” Orr said, then asked Stewart, 83, why he wrote it.

“COVID,” the actor deadpanned, to laughter from the audience. He explained that he had previously been asked to write his memoir but had always begged off, saying he was too busy with work.

Seated on a cushioned chair onstage with Orr, Stewart said his prior excuses about being too busy to write a memoir were only partially accurate. In truth, he left school at age 15 to become a full-time actor and said he wasn’t sure he was up to the challenge of writing a book.

Still, he said he always loved reading, and he dedicated his book to the memory of Ruth Wynn Owen and Cecil Dormand, whom he credited as being two inspirational teachers of English and of theater who helped start him on his professional journey.

Stewart’s role in regional theater paved the way for him to join the Royal Theater Company, where he studied and performed with such veterans of the stage as Judi Dench, Ben Kingsley and Ian McKellen.

Orr asked what it was like being a star in the company of such famed thespians, to which Stewart responded, “We didn’t see ourselves that way.”

In retrospect, being timid at that time is one of his deep regrets, Stewart said. If he could today give advice to his 40-year-old self, it would be to “be braver.” That’s also the advice he said he gives today to younger actors, telling them to “be fearless.”

Because of his timidness, Stewart said he didn’t get to know McKellen until much later, when they were in the first X-Men film together. On the studio set, they had adjacent trailers, and went on to become great friends. Stewart added that he considers his performances with McKellen in the plays No Man’s Land and Waiting for Godot personal highlights of his career.

Orr peppered Stewart with questions about Star Trek, including his first thoughts about the TV project (Stewart said he initially believed the show might end after just six months), about Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s thoughts on casting him in the role as Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (Roddenberry was not a fan, initially, Stewart later learned), regarding famous admirers of the show (which included Frank Sinatra and a former U.S. joint chiefs of staff who asked for permission to sit in the captain’s chair on set), his interactions with his co-stars; and why, after seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation and four movies, he was coaxed back into the captain’s chair in 2020 for the Picard TV series (because he came to believe there was still room to tell new stories about the famous starship captain).

As for his future, Stewart said he is still open to taking on roles, including in Shakespearean theater. That prompted Orr to say that he knew of a Shakespearian theater in Colorado.

“Do you have a small theater?” Stewart asked.

“Four hundred seats,” Orr replied.

“Egggggh,” Stewart responded, to laughter. He said that these days he is primarily interested in performing in small, intimate venues.

Stewart’s visit to Boulder was part of a seven-city, cross-country book tour, with most stops in bigger cities, including New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

So, why Boulder?

Stewart told the crowd that the decision was deliberate, because his wife, singer-songwriter Sunny Ozell, attended the �Թ�� of Colorado and had previously performed in the Glenn Miller Ballroom. She sang in various bands while in college.

“She was educated here in Boulder. And that is one of the reasons that we are here, because I know what a great impact it had upon her life and how much she loved this place, and the lasting relationships that it created,” he said.

Saturday’s event was sponsored by the Boulder Book Store and the Center of Student Involvement, part of CU student government. Students had the opportunity earlier in the week to sign up for free tickets.

While there were college-age men and women wearing CU attire in attendance, the biggest fans seated in the front rows tended to skew a bit older.

Kristol Cummings and her husband, Craig, drove six hours from Nebraska to attend the event, even though they didn’t have tickets. They said they felt extremely lucky to score additional tickets from people they met by chance in line.

Self-described Trekkies Liz Star, Alice Slaikeu and Stephanie Peterson came from even farther afield, flying from their hometown of Minneapolis to Denver on Thursday. On Friday, they each got matching Star Trek insignia arm tattoos, and on Saturday they arrived at the Glenn Miller Ballroom at 1:30 p.m. for the 6:30 p.m. event to be some of the first people in line for the general-seating event.

The only person to arrive earlier was Dan Valentine of Greeley, who showed up at 8:30 a.m. Valentine said it was an evening he will not soon forget after Stewart personally answered the question he submitted in writing in advance about what advice Stewart would give his younger self, while Valentine was sitting in the front row and was acknowledged by Stewart. Still, did he really need to arrive so early Saturday morning?

Said Valentine, “It was totally, totally worth it.”

Top image: Sarah Coulter/Paramount+

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Patrick Stewart of Star Trek (and Shakespeare) fame shared his wit and wisdom Saturday with attendees at the Glenn Miller Ballroom on the CU Boulder campus as part of national book tour.

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Reducing violence, with help from The Bard

Anonymous — Tue, 23 May 2023 16:55:16 +0000

Reducing violence, with help from The Bard Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/23/2023 - 10:55

Sarah Kuta

Colorado Shakespeare Festival staffers share Shakespeare & Violence Prevention program with scholars and practitioners in England, including at Shakespeare’s Globe theatre

Scientists largely understand what contributes to violence in schools and communities—and how to stop it. But actually putting that research into practice can be challenging.

Live theater can help.

That was the message the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s Amanda Giguere and Heidi Schmidt shared with an array of Shakespeare scholars and practitioners during a weeklong outreach tour in England in early May.

During their trip across the pond—funded by grants from the Office for Outreach and Engagement and the Center for Humanities & the Arts—Giguere and Schmidt met with experts at Shakespeare's Globe, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Shakespeare Institute and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

They gave presentations on CU Boulder’s innovative Shakespeare & Violence Prevention program in hopes that other theater companies and related organizations might one day implement similar initiatives to help prevent bullying, mistreatment, self-harm and violence in schools.

Amanda Giguere (left) and Heidi Schmidt (right) outside Shakespeare’s Globe.

“We have the research, but the science alone is not enough,” says Giguere, the festival’s director of outreach. “We really need engaging, human-focused storytelling and art to solve the problem of violence.”

Becoming an ‘upstander’

Founded in 2011, the Shakespeare & Violence Prevention program aims to help students recognize harmful or potentially unsafe situations and take steps to intervene. This interdisciplinary initiative is a collaboration between the Colorado Shakespeare Festival and the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence.

Through the program, actors visit various Colorado elementary, middle and high schools to perform abridged versions of Shakespeare plays. (During the most recent school year, they performed The Tempest and The Merchant of Venice, and next year they’ll be touring and presenting Romeo and Juliet and The Comedy of Errors.)

Afterward, the actors invite students to role-play moments of conflict or violence from the play and ask them to propose an alternative strategy to help reduce or prevent some of the harm.

“This is all rooted in the power and efficacy of the ‘upstander,’ also known as an ally or active bystander,” says Giguere. “It can be extremely effective when one person decides to take action if someone is being bullied or if they are aware of planned violence, rather than passively sitting by. Sometimes all it takes is one person to say, ‘Hey, that’s not cool,’ and usually the mistreatment stops right away.”

Giguere and Schmidt along with the staff of Globe Education.

To help conceptualize violence, researchers often use the metaphor of an iceberg. Although really big acts, such as school shootings, are the ones that make the news, they are just the tip of the iceberg, says Giguere. Those acts are typically rooted in a broader culture that tolerates and even perpetuates bullying, microaggressions and general mistreatment. The violence iceberg also includes self-harm and suicide.

In the long run, the program’s organizers hope that cultivating a robust community of upstanders among students will help reduce small acts of violence and, ultimately, will help foster more positive, supportive school climates. Together, those changes should, in turn, help prevent even larger, more devastating incidents in the future.

And just as rehearsing helps actors polish a performance, practicing can help students become more comfortable and familiar with an array of upstander strategies.

“We’re using Shakespeare’s plays to give the kids a fictional metaphor they can step into and practice their own upstander strategies,” says Giguere. “We practice so many things in this world that we want to get better at—we practice tying our shoes, we practice CPR, we practice active shooter drills. All of those things don’t come easily, and they take practice. The same goes for upstander behavior.”

Borrowing from The Bard

Shakespeare’s plays—particularly the tragedies and history plays—are brimming with conflict. And while the words may be more than 400 years old, the themes remain relevant today.

“Many of these stories are rooted in a lot of what still shapes violence today, which is deep pain, deep trauma, deep division, deep disconnection,” says Giguere. “As I’ve been investigating these plays over the years, I really do think Shakespeare was trying to figure out something about why humans are so violent with each other.”

His plays also contain multiple perspectives—sometimes even within the same character—which helps students think about the complexity and messiness of the human experience. People are not all bad or all good, but some mix of both.

Schmidt (left) and Giguere (right) seated inside Shakespeare’s Globe.

Role-playing also helps students develop empathy because it encourages them to step into a character’s shoes and consider the scene from their point of view, Giguere says. That’s a useful skill for responding calmly and compassionately during a heated moment, rather than reacting with additional anger or violence.

“Taking time to pause, take a breath, think about the world from another person’s perspective is one of the key building blocks of a safer community,” Giguere says.

The power of interdisciplinary collaboration

During the past 12 years, the program has reached 126,000 students across the Front Range, with a goal of spreading into other parts of the state in the near future. Collaborating with other university departments has been a major driver behind that success, says Giguere.

In addition to drawing on evidence-based research from the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, the program has collaborated with numerous other partners, including the Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance, the School of Education and the Department of Theatre & Dance.

As the program has demonstrated, bringing together experts from across campus—then sharing that combined knowledge with the public—can produce powerful results.

“Synthesis of knowledge across disciplines and fields is one way that such knowledge becomes more meaningful and more connected to social practice and everyday life,” says David Meens, director of the Office for Outreach and Engagement.

To learn more or support the Shakespeare & Violence Prevention program, follow this link.

Colorado Shakespeare Festival staffers share Shakespeare & Violence Prevention program with scholars and practitioners in England, including at Shakespeare’s Globe theatre.

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The Bard in your backyard: Shakespeare covers Colorado

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Feb 2019 17:40:54 +0000

The Bard in your backyard: Shakespeare covers Colorado Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 02/20/2019 - 10:40

The Colorado Shakespeare Festival plans to bring live Shakespeare to every county in the state by 2028, reaching an estimated 180,000 audience members.

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CSF stages fresh, funny ‘Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead’

Anonymous — Thu, 06 Jul 2017 18:16:25 +0000

CSF stages fresh, funny ‘Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead’ Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 07/06/2017 - 12:16

Tom Stoppard’s classic play turns ‘Hamlet’ inside out

The Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s 60th season continues with “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead,” a critically acclaimed 1966 play by Tom Stoppard. CSF’s producing artistic director Timothy Orr directs the production.

In this hilarious and mind-bending comedy by the Oscar-winning screenwriter of "Shakespeare in Love," "Hamlet" is brilliantly retold through the eyes of two minor characters. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two bewildered schoolmates sent to pull the Danish royal out of a descent into madness, grapple with fate, free will and the game of life.

In a unique twist, CSF will present “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead” in repertory with “Hamlet” on the indoor �Թ�� Theatre stage. The sets complement each other well, and the two plays share one cast, with each actor playing the same role in both productions.

Michael Bouchard.

“The feeling we're going for is that ‘Hamlet’ is happening just on the other side of the curtain, just around the corner,” Orr says. “I thought it would be a fascinating artistic journey not only for the actors but also for the audiences who will see both plays.”

The “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern” set, Orr explains, transports the audience to a backstage-like area where the title characters while away the hours flipping coins and playing cards as the events of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” unfold in shadows behind a large cyclorama.

But for all its “Hamlet” references, Stoppard’s play is a very different animal. The language will feel more familiar to a contemporary audience, and the play is more comedy than tragedy. The pair of title characters, played by beloved Colorado clowns Sean Scrutchins and Michael Bouchard, delivers an endless supply of intelligent banter and “Who’s on first?”-style routines reminiscent of Abbott and Costello or Martin and Lewis.

Sean Scrutchins.

“When you plop this humor into the context of something as heavy and serious as ‘Hamlet,’ it can be just ridiculous fun,” Orr says. “At the same time, it’s very chilling, since the title of the play gives away exactly what’s going to happen to the characters.”

Orr says designing this play alongside “Hamlet” director Carolyn Howarth was like “playing a game of three-dimensional chess.” They’ve both had to consider each other’s plays to make sure the two work together in repertory. Props must be strategically placed for the sake of continuity, and each cast member must treat every exit like an entrance to someplace else.

“We’re trying to put little Easter eggs into each other’s plays for audiences who will see both of them,” Orr says. “We want people to think, ‘If I could just lean over far enough, I could catch the other play.’”

While a fresh viewing of Shakespeare’s masterpiece heightens the humor in “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern,” Orr assures audiences that they need not know “Hamlet” or Shakespeare to enjoy the witty wordplay and hilarious misunderstandings in this production.

“At its heart,” he says, “it's a story about two ordinary guys trying their best to navigate through life, just like the rest of us.”

“Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead” opens Saturday, July 22, with an audience preview on Friday, July 21, and runs through Aug. 13. Tickets start at $20, and limited quantities remain. Buy them online at coloradoshakes.org, over the phone at 303-492-8008 or in person at the CU Presents box office, 972 Broadway, Boulder. The box office is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and is located in the �Թ�� Club building on the CU Boulder campus.

The Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s 60th season continues with “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead,” a critically-acclaimed 1966 play by Tom Stoppard. CSF’s producing artistic director Timothy Orr directs the production.

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Classicist tutors Julius Caesar actors on the potent rhetoric of Rome

Anonymous — Sun, 25 Jun 2017 17:16:59 +0000

Classicist tutors Julius Caesar actors on the potent rhetoric of Rome Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 06/25/2017 - 11:16

Clint Talbott

Colorado Shakespeare Festival director sought help to facilitate ‘one of the most amazing forms of communications in theatre’

Tyler Lansford is transforming the death of Julius Caesar into new life for Roman rhetoric. Audiences attending this summer’s Colorado Shakespeare Festival will see, hear and feel the resurrection.

Lansford, who teaches Latin and Greek literature in the �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder Department of Classics, is coaching Julius Caesar actors on rhetoric.

Tyler Lansford, left, works with Director Anthony Powell in the Colorado Shakespeare Festival's 2017 production of Julius Caesar. At top of the page, Lansford discusses rhetorical devices with members of the cast. Photos by Heidi Schmidt.

Lansford and the Shakespeare festival have teamed up on the belief that helping actors more fully understand classic rhetoric might help them better convey the full meaning of the play and of its subject. So Lansford shows actors what rhetoric is—and is not.

And rhetoric is not a dirty word.

Classic rhetorical devices enrich masterpieces from the Iliad to the Gettysburg Address. Nonetheless, Lansford notes, “rhetoric has declined from a cornerstone of liberal education to a dismissive epithet for misleading or bombastic speech.”

Rhetoric is a rich and rewarding art, categorized like a science. But few playgoers have the background to catch, on the fly, “any but the most obvious instances of antithesis, anaphora or conduplicatio,” Lansford states.

Don’t be fazed by the Greek terminology. Anaphora, for instance, is the repetition of a word at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses or sentences. Brutus’ speech at Caesar’s funeral features this device:

“As Caesar loved me, I weep for him.
As he was fortunate, I rejoice at it.
As he was valiant, I honor him.
But, as he was ambitious, I slew him.”

That is just one of many rhetorical devices the play employs. And the primacy of rhetoric is why Anthony Powell, director of the CSF’s 2017 production of Julius Caesar, sought Lansford’s help.

Many actors, particularly younger actors, must perform the elegant rhetoric onstage, but can be “dazzled by the sheer profusion of ornamental flourishes with which virtually every line flashes and gleams,” Lansford states.

“We know that the principal method of publication in the ancient world was oral performance – everything from the Iliad and the Odyssey to Livy’s history of Rome was composed for the ear,” Lansford says. “The difficulty is that we don’t have any native speakers of ancient Greek or Latin, so our ability to re-create the performance aspect of classical literature is severely limited.”

The play demonstrates the power of rhetoric, which Cassius uses to persuade Brutus of the need to kill Caesar. Such rhetoric is “part of the action of the play, not just in the background of the language,” Lansford says.

I am excited by the idea of reviving that aspect of the classical tradition – even if indirectly – by helping actors realize the expressive potential of classical rhetoric in Shakespeare."

Powell first read Julius Caesar in high school, and understood it included grand rhetoric. He comprehended this more fully after reading Rome and Rhetoric: Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, a 2011 book by Pulitzer-winning historian Garry Wills.

So how will a Colorado Shakespeare Festival audience benefit from the actors’ coaching in rhetoric?

“When the actor is really operating on all cylinders and has a lot going on in their head, an audience won’t necessarily know what they’re seeing or what the actor is actually doing,” Powell observes. “But they know something is going on, and they lean forward in their seats.”

“It’s one of the most amazing forms of communications in theatre, to me.”

Lansford concurs, noting that trained actors like those in CSF will deliver lines expressively even without knowing all the components thrumming under Shakespeare’s hood. Still, when actors understand the “tricks and tropes” of the play, they gain the “tools to work with it in a more creative way, a more expressive way.”

Because Latin and ancient Greek are no longer spoken languages, “that glorious rhetoric produced by Cicero or Demosthenes remains inaccessible in a basic way. We will never hear a Greek or a Roman speech spoken again, and there are some remarkable reports of the effect that a speaker like Cicero could have on crowds, the electrifying effect he could have on crowds.”

“It’s almost as if he knew how to go straight for the central nervous system,” Lansford says, adding:

“I am excited by the idea of reviving that aspect of the classical tradition – even if indirectly – by helping actors realize the expressive potential of classical rhetoric in Shakespeare.”

And he observes: “I think rhetoric has fallen on hard times. It’s identified with deceptive speech, and that’s a sad comedown for a noble art.”

The Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s 2017 production of Julius Caesar runs from July 7 through Aug. 12 at the Mary Ripon Theater on the CU Boulder campus. For tickets or information, click here.

Tyler Lansford is transforming the death of Julius Caesar into new life for Roman rhetoric. Audiences attending this summer’s Colorado Shakespeare Festival will see, hear and feel the resurrection.

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CSF’s ‘Julius Caesar’ is both timeless and timely

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Jun 2017 21:50:07 +0000

CSF’s ‘Julius Caesar’ is both timeless and timely Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 06/20/2017 - 15:50

Shakespeare’s political thriller ‘moves like a house on fire’

Yes, there will be togas. No, it won’t be boring.

The Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s 60th season continues with an homage to the plays performed during its first-ever summer in 1958, including a production of “Julius Caesar” set in classical Rome. But while the setting evokes ancient history, Director Anthony Powell assures audiences that this play is anything but.

“I don’t think Shakespeare needs to be done in tights or togas, but it makes a strong statement about how timeless his themes are,” Powell says. “You can set it in Rome, you can set it on the moon. It doesn’t matter. As long as we do our job right, the audience will make connections between then and now.”

Robert Sicular performs in the title role of "Julius Caesar."

Seemingly benevolent leaders. Jealous critics. Powerful men who ignore bad omens. Lies, scheming and scandal. These are the themes in “Julius Caesar,” the spellbinding political thriller whose characters felt as real and relevant 400 years ago as they did a century ago, a generation ago—and today.

What makes the play so timeless isn’t just its political commentary. It’s also the characters—all of them complicated, heartbreaking and fallible.

“You think of it as a big epic play, but it’s really a chamber piece,” Powell says. “It’s an intimate drama about these very complex, very troubled people who see the writing on the wall and blithely walk into the fire anyway. We’ve all done that. I’m always leaping before I look, and it generally gets me in trouble.”

“Julius Caesar” grabbed hold of Powell in high school and never let go. He remembers feeling awestruck when his history teacher dropped the needle on an LP recording of the play with Peter Finch and Patrick Wymark.

“They talked so fast,” he says. “I don’t know if it was an artistic choice or it was just to save money, but it moved like a house on fire, just at a breakneck pace, and it got me hooked. I want this production to emphasize how quickly things get wildly out of control.”

Actor Robert Sicular has played Mark Antony and Marcus Brutus in other productions of “Julius Caesar,” but this will be his first turn as the title character. He’s done extensive research on Roman history over the years and can’t wait for this new challenge.

“This guy might be the most famous person who ever lived,” Sicular says. “Caesar made himself divine. He talked about himself in the third person, and he didn’t make comments so much as pronouncements. But Shakespeare has this uncanny way of finding the humanity in him.”

It’s a classic Shakespearean move to turn larger-than-life historical figures into jealous lovers, insecure leaders and conflicted mothers and fathers—people in whom we can see ourselves, togas or no togas.

“He wrote this thing 400 years ago about something that happened 2,000 years ago, but we’re still performing it,” Sicular says, “because the same stuff is still going on.”

“Julius Caesar” opens Saturday, July 8, with an audience preview on Friday, July 7, and runs through Aug. 12. Tickets start at $20. Buy them online at coloradoshakes.org, over the phone at 303-492-8008 or in person at the CU Presents box office, 972 Broadway, Boulder. The box office is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and is located in the �Թ�� Club building on the CU Boulder campus.

Yes, there will be togas. No, it won’t be boring. The Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s 60th season continues with an homage to the plays performed during its first-ever summer in 1958, including a production of “Julius Caesar” set in classical Rome. But while the setting evokes ancient history, Director Anthony Powell assures audiences that this play is anything but.

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Bardfest shakes up a Shakespearean masterpiece

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Jun 2017 00:50:12 +0000

Bardfest shakes up a Shakespearean masterpiece Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 06/13/2017 - 18:50

The Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s 60th season is all about revisiting the same plays staged in its very first summer: “The Taming of the Shrew,” “Hamlet” and “Julius Caesar.” But no one said a reboot had to be predictable.

This summer’s “Hamlet,” opening June 23 and running through Aug. 13, will be the ninth production in CSF history—but it’ll be the first to be staged indoors with a woman in the title role.

Why cast a woman as Hamlet? Director Carolyn Howarth prefers to ask, why not a woman?

“Women have been playing Hamlet for hundreds of years, so this isn’t anything new,” she says. “I’ve seen dozens of men play the role gorgeously and I will again. I just really felt like giving this character a slightly different perspective and seeing what new revelations that would bring.”

Lenne Klingaman (Hamlet) and Rodney Lizcano (Polonius) rehearse one of the great play's classic scenes. Photo by Jennifer Koskinen

Female Hamlets date back to the early 1700s, when Charlotte Charke made a name for herself wearing pants both on the stage and off. The Victorians, who saw Hamlet as passive, pensive and effeminate, fully embraced the idea. And in the 20th century, the likes of Sarah Bernhardt, Asta Nielsen and Frances de la Tour made headlines and big statements with their unique portrayals of the Danish prince.

CSF’s 21st-century contribution is Lenne Klingaman, who has been seen at the festival in “Measure for Measure” and “The Fantasticks.” Locals may also have seen her at the Denver Center in “Appoggiatura” and as Juliet in that other Shakespeare classic.

Howarth says she got the inspiration to cast a woman while watching the Olympic Games last summer.

“I was mesmerized by the fencers,” she says. “One day I turned on the TV after the fencing had started, and I didn’t know whether the fencers were men or women. They have such similar vocabularies of movement, and I thought that was really interesting.”

In Howarth’s mind, good fight skills are good fight skills—so she had no qualms casting two women to act out the iconic Hamlet-Laertes duel scene. She’s confident Klingaman, a taekwondo black belt, and Ava Kostia, an experienced fight specialist, can do the scene justice.

“Female actresses aren’t given that much opportunity to do fight scenes, even though they’re trained for it in school,” Howarth says. “This will be Lenne’s first opportunity to show off those skills in a major role.”

In many ways, Howarth’s production looks toward the past as much as it does the future. Shakespeare noted in the script that “Hamlet” takes place just before the holidays, so Howarth opted for a snow-covered set inspired by Denmark’s eerie Troll Forest. The costumes look sleek and Edwardian, as if in a nod to the era when Sarah Bernhardt committed Hamlet to film for the first time.

Genders, fights and costumes aside, Howarth believes the heart of “Hamlet” lies in its lead character’s relatability. Whether you’re a man or a woman, you’ve probably felt the love, grief, betrayal and blinding rage Hamlet feels at some point in your life.

“Like Hamlet, we’ve all been sad, we’ve all been confused, we’ve all made crude jokes, regardless of gender,” she says. “Ultimately, what I’ve discovered with this play is that people are people.”

“Hamlet” opens Saturday, June 24, with an audience preview on Friday, June 23, and runs through Aug. 13. Tickets start at $20. Buy them online at coloradoshakes.org, over the phone at 303-492-8008 or in person at the CU Presents box office, 972 Broadway, Boulder. The box office is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and is located in the �Թ�� Club building on the CU Boulder campus.

This summer’s “Hamlet,” opening June 23 and running through Aug. 13, will be the ninth production in CSF history—but it’ll be the first to be staged indoors with a woman in the title role.

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CSF’s 60th season opens with ‘The Taming of the Shrew’

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Jun 2017 21:50:29 +0000

CSF’s 60th season opens with ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/05/2017 - 15:50

The Colorado Shakespeare Festival is set to kick off its landmark 60th season in style with a swing-era production of “The Taming of the Shrew”—the same play that opened CSF’s very first festival in 1958.

CSF reimagines Shakespeare’s zany comedy by setting it in New York City just after World War II. Kate, a plucky pilot who’s just returned from the war, meets her stubborn match, Petruchio, on the vibrant streets of Little Italy. As the two duke it out in a battle of wits and dance the night away, they discover, against all odds, a mutual respect that’s almost like being in love.

“Shrew” director Christopher DuVal, a longtime fight director and Oregon Shakespeare Festival veteran, wanted to set the play in the 1940s to explore that era’s “radical break in gender roles.” During the war, women everywhere kept the economy running by stepping into men’s jobs … and when the war was over, many refused to return to their subservient lives.

“In our play, Kate was a Women Airforce Service Pilot within the war effort, and she has since come back home to find there are limited options,” DuVal says. “Her father expects her to settle down and get married, but Kate sees herself as a rightful and very deserving equal of men.”

DuVal emphasizes that CSF’s production isn’t about a man who tames a woman. It’s about two people who learn about themselves and about each other as they fall in love.

“Petruchio is as tamed by Kate as she is tamed by him,” DuVal says. “They find out that they complement each other deeper than they ever thought possible.”

Both of this production’s leads, Shelly Gaza and Scott Coopwood, have played Kate and Petruchio before in other parts of the country. Now that they’re a little bit older and a little bit wiser, they’re excited to bring more complexity and life experience to these characters.

In the 12 years since she last played Kate at the Utah Shakespeare Festival, Gaza says, “my concept of being a good partner and spouse has completely evolved. I think relationships are about give and take, and that’s true for Kate and Petruchio, too: The journey is not about taming Kate, it’s about Kate and Petruchio both learning to become good people for each other.”

Coopwood likes Petruchio’s wit, charm and bravado, and he’s excited to see how those characteristics look on an older, wiser protagonist—one who’s been hardened by years of searching for a soulmate.

“Kate and Petruchio challenge each other, and that’s what they’ve been lacking in other relationships,” he says. “They have to get over the thought that, ‘Well, this has never worked before.’ But they’re absolutely meant for each other and they do legitimately fall in love.”

While he loves the comic relief, Coopwood says he’s itching to delve into the play’s elements of romance and self-discovery—something he didn’t get to do the first time he played Petruchio a decade ago.

“I come across as a pretty intimidating person, but I have a gooey chocolate center,” he says. “Coming at it 10 years later, I want more of the heart.”

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Bard fest hosts reading of ‘translated’ ‘Henry VI’ plays

Anonymous — Mon, 31 Oct 2016 20:55:53 +0000

Bard fest hosts reading of ‘translated’ ‘Henry VI’ plays Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/31/2016 - 14:55

Clay Bonnyman Evans

‘Play On!’ project seeks to improve accessibility for the modern ear, and Colorado Shakespeare Festival is on board: 'We’re not saying, ‘Yo, dude!’ or anything.'

In 2015, the oldest Shakespeare festival in the United States announced that it would commission 36 playwrights, including many women and writers of color, to “translate” 39 plays into “contemporary modern English.”

Intended to “bring fresh voices and perspective to the rigorous work of” translation, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s “Play On!” project sparked instant, heated controversy and debate among Shakespeare aficionados.

Geoffrey Kent leads a table reading of Douglas Langworthy's translation of Henry VI, Part 2. Photo by Jackson Xia for CU Presents.

“Some think it’s sacrilegious,” says Timothy Orr, producing artistic director at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, America’s second-oldest of its kind. “Others, like myself, have said, ‘Let’s not judge an artistic endeavor until it’s been attempted.’ If we held (Shakespeare) too holy and sacred, then we wouldn’t have ‘West Side Story.’”

According to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, “Each playwright is being asked to put the same pressure and rigor of language as Shakespeare did on his, keeping in mind meter, rhythm, metaphor, image, rhyme, rhetoric and emotional content. Our hope is to have 39 unique side-by-side companion translations of Shakespeare’s plays that are both performable and extremely useful reference texts for both classrooms and productions.”

CSF got in on the act in late October when it hosted a table reading of Colorado playwright Douglas Langworthy’s new “translation” of two plays, “Henry VI,” parts 2 and 3, directed by veteran festival actor and director Geoffrey Kent. The reading was held on the CU Boulder campus.

“Some think it’s sacrilegious. Others, like myself, have said, ‘Let’s not judge an artistic endeavor until it’s been attempted.’ If we held (Shakespeare) too holy and sacred, then we wouldn’t have ‘West Side Story.’”

Kent and Langworthy approached CSF to host the reading — entirely paid for by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival — after working together on the reading of the playwright’s translation of “Henry VI, Part 1” at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts earlier this year.

“Doug’s got a pretty light touch, so it still sounds like Shakespeare. We’re not saying, ‘Yo, dude!’ or anything,” Kent says. “I really think the goal is to create scripts that are a little less legwork for the actor and a little more accessible to the modern ear.”

Actor Kelsey Didion at a table reading of Douglas Langworthy's translation of Henry VI, Part 2. Jackson Xia for CU Presents.

“To be honest,” Orr says, “many Shakespeare productions today are making small nips and tucks to the script, to make it more accessible and understandable. Occasionally words are replaced to help with understanding.”

CSF’s reading featured 10 members of Equity, the professional actors’ union, including two CU Boulder theater professors, Chip Person and Kevin Rich, and four non-Equity actors. Two CU Boulder undergraduate theater majors, Kristopher Buxton and Hannelore Rolfing, rounded out the cast.

Participating in “Play On!” is just the latest Shakespearean accomplishment at CU Boulder. The reading coincided with the unveiling of the lineup for next summer’s 60^thseason, when CSF will become one of the few companies in North America to perform Shakespeare’s complete canon two times.

In addition, the festival was instrumental in bringing to CU a prestigious exhibit of Shakespeare’s First Folio this fall, and next year CU Boulder will launch its first Shakespeare studies degree program.

Rebounding after several years of financial challenges and deficit spending, CSF ticket sales have exceeded projections every year since 2011, including this season. Orr says the organization projects that it will finish in the black for a fourth consecutive season after its fiscal year ends on Dec. 31.

In 2015, the oldest Shakespeare festival in the United States announced that it would commission 36 playwrights to “translate” 39 plays into “contemporary modern English.” The Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s “Play On!” project sparked instant, heated controversy and debate among Shakespeare aficionados. Now, the Colorado Shakespeare Festival has hosted a reading of two "translated" plays.

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Colorado Shakespeare Festival

All the world’s a stage for William Shakespeare

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Act Two: Teaching Shakespeare

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