A couple years ago the Oregon Shakespeare Festival made a bold move by commissioning 36 playwrights to translate the works of Shakespeare into modern English. I honestly can’t tell you how it went, as I didn’t follow the project. I’m not interested in your project if your premise is that Shakespeare has to be rewritten.
American Shakespeare Center is putting their own more interesting spin on this game, announcing this week that they will be commissioning a modern canon of 38 “companion pieces” to each of Shakespeare’s works. What constitutes a companion piece? Straight from the Artistic Director Jim Warren:
We’re not looking for a retelling of Shakespeare plays. We’re looking for partner plays that are inspired by Shakespeare, plays that might be sequels or prequels to Shakespeare’s stories, plays that might tell the stories of minor characters in Shakespeare’s stories, plays that might dramatize Shakespeare’s company creating the first production of a title, plays that might include modern characters interacting with Shakespeare’s characters, plays that will be even more remarkable when staged in rotating repertory with their Shakespeare counterpart and actors playing the same characters who might appear in both plays, plays that not only will appeal to other Shakespeare theatres, but also to all types of theatres and audiences around the world.
The ambitious project stretches for the next twenty years and will pay out a million dollars in prize money.
I remember back in college, probably after being inspired by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, I tried my hand at a similar piece I called Ophelia’s Song. The premise was that Ophelia was in on Hamlet’s feigned madness, only it wasn’t feigned, so as he went insane in his own peculiar way, so did she. They would speak in modern English during the original scenes, and then switch back to original Shakespeare dialogue for the “real” scenes. It was never produced, but it was fun to write.
So, who’s going to enter?
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