Let her read it in thy looks at board …
The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) has announced the 30 young people aged 9-18 who will form its first Youth Advisory Board, which will report directly to the Company's board and thus be able to contribute to its vision and planning. Jacqui O’Hanlon, Director of Education, said: ‘We need young people's voices to be at the heart of what we do. They are the next generation – they need to be heard and we need to ensure their opinions inform decision making about their lives now and in the future.’ The group will meet regularly across the year with the intention for some representatives from the YAB to progress onto the RSC's board.
Meanwhile, members of the company's Next Generation ACT company are to be cast in a professional RSC production for the first time, with each of the 24 members of the young company taking turns to play Jessica and Lorenzo in the First Encounters with Shakespeare touring production of The Merchant of Venice. The production, edited and directed by Robin Belfield, will tour regional theatres and schools in the autumn. It is to be co-presented for the first time by Adobe, and will feature digital learning experiences through Adobe Spark and Creative Cloud. The production will open at schools in the Midlands followed by a week at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, then a seven-week tour of schools and regional theatres across England.
www.rsc.org.uk/first-encounters-the-merchant-of-venice
Why, masters, my good friends, mine honest neighbours …
Geoffrey Marsh, the historian who believes he has pinpointed the exact location of Shakespeare's London home – as reported in last issue's Bardwatching – now proposes the bard's illustrious neighbours as possible sources for his works’ inspiration.
Marsh, who is director of the V&A's department of theatre and performance, identifies what is now 35 Great St Helen's in the City of London as the home of Shakespeare in the late 1590s, and points out that his neighbours there would have included doctors Edward Jorden and Peter Turner, the latter of whom had lived both in Italy and Germany. While it is impossible to prove that any conversation took place between the men, Turner was, Marsh points out, Shakespeare's immediate next-door neighbour, and the historian speculates that conversations between these men may have taken place at church, which it would have been a legal requirement that all three attend each Sunday.
In such conversations, Shakespeare might have picked up any amount of inspiration on the subject of countries he included regularly in his plays without our having any evidence of his having visited. Themes prevalent in his works might also have been inspired by such men: Jorden was, for example, the author of the first known medical tract on the concept of ‘hysteria’, a uniquely female malady closely linked to outbreaks of ‘witchcraft’ both in the UK and across the Atlantic.
Thou hast seen these signs …
In a recent performance of the RSC's The Taming of the Shrew, a deaf actor made history by stepping in at short notice to understudy the role of a hearing actor, and signing the part of Vincentia (a female version of Shakespeare's original Vincentio).
While no extra aids (such as captioning) were given to the audience for the performance, it has been reported that the response was extremely positive, and the visual nature of the signing was appreciated by the uninitiated rather than causing confusion. Needless to say, many audience members are unfamiliar with aspects of Shakespeare's own language, so British Sign Language will have become merely a second linguistic aspect of the production which required a little extra engagement.
It is to be hoped that this first will pave the way for greater inclusivity in cross casting of roles like this. As Charlotte Arrowsmith, who usually plays Curtis, said, ‘I am an actor just like everyone else in the company. It just takes a bit of extra effort for us all to make it work.’
The Taming of the Shrew, reimagined in a matriarchy, continues in Stratford until 31 August, before embarking on a tour. www.rsc.org.uk/the-taming-of-the-shrew
What is this quintessence of dust?
The Washingtonian reports on a project underway at the Folger Shakespeare Library which could, to an infinitesimal degree of possibility, uncover some of the Bard of Avon's actual DNA. No, really.
Project Dustbunny involves collecting dirt and grime from the inside of the Folger Library's older books, and then analysing the human DNA and proteins found therein. Yum. The experiment began in 2015, with geneticist Julie Segre ascertaining that a 400-year-old bible in the collection had been read, or at least handled, by a person from Northern Europe, with ‘skin bacteria consistent with acne’.
Of course it's pretty unlikely that Shakespeare even handled any of the items in the collection, let alone that this project might uncover a sample of DNA from a suspiciously Black-Country native individual with hints of 16th century London, but you can be sure that if such a thing should occur, Bardwatching will report on it…