A Life with Lear • one-day seminar
Robert Benedetti says, “LEAR is my life play. It was the first play I ever directed. I was at the time the Artistic Director of the University of Chicago Court Theatre; it was 1958 (24 years before James Shapiro graduated from there) and I had Elder Olson and David Bevington as my dramaturgs. I played Lear once, and I’ve directed it three times since (roughly once every twenty years), and am ready to do it again when the opportunity presents itself. I am certain it is the greatest play in the English language.”
This is an all-day seminar in a comfortable setting. We will spend some time reviewing my lifetime with LEAR and going through a close reading of the play, with actors to read scenes as they arise. The focus will be on the play itself, plus the experiences of doing it at different cultural times (1958, 1965, 1975) and how the play lived at those times and places and with different casts. But most of the seminar is about how the play works internally.
Suitable for audience members, readers, actors, directors—anyone with an interest in this most remarkable of plays.
Limited to 25 participants.
$35 fee. Please bring your own lunch.
Or email Robin Williams: robin@InternationalShakespeare.center
This seminar is part of the ISC A Year of Lear, a full year of celebrating this most profound of Shakespeare’s plays.