Aaron O’Hara as Bottom & James Stewart (Jasmine Marie Rose) as Titania

Donkey head by Nancy Scharbach.

THE OPEN ROAD

peace, love, happiness & understanding

April 7, 2022

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM IN PRISON

The Open Road also has some VERY EXCITING NEWS!!! “A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Prison,” a film by Bushra Azzouz, will have its World Premiere on Sunday, August 7th, at 6 p.m., at the Cinema 21 movie theater in Portland, Oregon. Click on this link to watch the trailer and buy your tickets!:

https://www.cinema21.com/movie/a-midsummer-nights-dream-in-prison

April is of course National Poetry Month (https://poets.org/national-poetry-month), and around the 23rd of the month the Open Road likes to celebrate WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S BIRTHDAY

(https://openroadpdx.com/event/peace-love-happiness-newsletter-4-23-4-29/).

(WARNING!: this BARD’S BIRTHDAY ISSUE of peace, love, happiness & understanding is chock full o’ links! Endless hours of fun for the whole family!)

On April 24th, for our Bibliophiles Unanimous! Zoom gathering, legendary actor-director-writer-scholar KEITH SCALES gave a reading:  OF STRANGE SHADOWS: THE MYSTERIES OF SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS. A lively discussion ensued.

In July of 2006, I started a weekly Dialogue Group at Two Rivers prison, in Umatilla, Oregon—“The Stories We Tell Ourselves: How Our Thinking Shapes Our Lives.” I would leave the prison feeling exhilarated, with a sense that what we were doing together was profound, even sacred. After two years, one of the men who was serving a life sentence asked me if I would do a play with them. In 2008, we did “Hamlet.” It was the first time that inmates in an Oregon prison had performed a play by Shakespeare.

Two years later, we did “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Nancy Scharbach borrowed costumes from Portland Opera, and made the props, including a magnificent ass head for Bottom. Our dear friend Bushra Azzouz had the idea of making a documentary film about the project. She was given permission to bring a film crew to the prison eight times. She filmed interviews with each of the actors, group dialogues on subjects like “Love” and “Dreams,” as well as rehearsals and public performances.

Sadly, Bushra passed away three years ago, on June 13, 2019. Before she died, she assembled a team of people to make sure the film would get finished, including Enie Vaisburd, who is the Supervising Editor. The editing of the film is now finished. After getting sound and color correction, it will be ready to be released.

Many people contributed financially and in other ways to the film. A special thank you goes to Ronni Lacroute, who gave us a very generous donation, which has allowed us to finish the film. And, as always, a big big thank you to Jerry, Donna, Marsha, Chris and Jordon Smith, without whom none of the prison dialogues or plays would have ever happened.

The Portland Premiere of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Prison” will be a glorious event! Lovers of Bushra will be there in abundance—her husband Andy Larkin, members of her extended family from all over the globe, her close friends, her film students, members of the Portland film community, people who came to see the play, and of course actors who were in the play and who are in the film, along with their loved ones. We will enjoy two great works of Art—one by William Shakespeare and one by Bushra Azzouz. Not to be missed!

For Nancy and me, doing the Shakespeare plays in prison has been one of the richest experiences in our lives. We did “Hamlet” in 2008, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in 2010, followed by “Twelfth Night,” “Twelve Angry Men” (not by Shakespeare), “King Lear” and “A Winter’s Tale.” We did all this under the aegis of our nonprofit organization, Open Hearts Open Minds (http://openheartsopenminds.net).

In 2015, I decided that I would just be going out to the Umatilla prison once a month, instead of once a week. (It’s a six-hour drive, round trip.) I thought that would be the end of the theater projects at Two Rivers prison. To my surprise, my decision caused Open Hearts Open Minds to grow. Friends stepped forward to become prison volunteers and to keep the Dialogue Group going on a weekly basis. Deborah Buchanan, Bill Faricy, Jude Russell, Dick Willis, Kristen Sagan, Nancy Scharbach, Katie Radditz and Bushra Azzouz kept that program going. Carla Grant and Don Kern started a theater program at the women’s prison in Wilsonville, Coffee Creek. We started an Arts Program and a Music Program at Columbia River Prison in Portland. In 2015, I co-directed a production of “Hamlet” with Anna Crandall, Patrick Walsh, Victoria Spencer and Todd Oleson. Anna, Patrick and Victoria went on to direct “Metamorphoses” by Mary Zimmerman and “The Tempest” by Shakespeare. Todd Oleson directed “A Christmas Carol.” Jake Merriman is now in charge of the Theatre Program at Two Rivers prison. He has, with some collaborators, directed “Macbeth” and “Julius Caesar.”

In July of 2019, I stepped down as Executive Director of Open Hearts Open Minds. Carla Grant took the helm. In September of 2019, The Open Road (https://openroadpdx.com) adventure began.

You might be surprised to learn that there is such a thing as a Shakespeare in Prisons Conference. The Bard himself might be astonished by this, by the number of books that have been written about him and the frequency with which his plays are performed all over the world—400 years after his death. Plays are transitory things. Evidence suggests that he hoped for immortality as a poet, but the idea of  being a famous playwright could have seemed as far-fetched as becoming a famous wheelwright or shipwright.

Nikos Kazantakis, author of Zorba the Greek, travelled to England and wrote a book about his impressions. In the long chapter on Shakespeare, he says:

An infinite spirit, from the depths of hell to the summit of Paradise. If the whole of humanity was to send a single representative to speak for its rights before God, it would send him. He is also the only one who could represent our planet at some giant interplanetary conference. No one ever used human speech with such power and at the same time such sweetness as Shakespeare, with such harshness and at the same time such melody and so magical an aura.

–from England: A travel journal by Nikos Kazantzakis, p. 261

When I directed my first play in prison, I knew of one other person who had done that—Curt Tofteland. Curt was Artistic Director of Kentucky Shakespeare. I knew of him from the film “Shakespeare Behind Bars” (https://www.kanopy.com/en/multcolib/video/268952), a documentary film about a production of “The Tempest” that he directed at Luther Luckett prison in Kentucky. I had gone out to see his production of “Measure for Measure,” and later Nancy and I had the good fortune to see the last performance of “Julius Caesar”—the last play he directed there. After the show, in the prison, there was a giant Love-In. I was an emotional wreck at the end of that. It was clear that all the actors loved him SO MUCH, and that he loved them.

Curt lives in Michigan now, and is as busy as ever with his nonprofit organization, Shakespeare Behind Bars (https://shakespearebehindbars.org). Curt co-founded the Shakespeare in Prisons Conferences and the Shakespeare in Prisons Network in 20012, along with Scott Jackson and Dr. Peter Holland of the University of Notre Dame (https://shakespeare.nd.edu/service/shakespeare-in-prisons/). Here’s a link to one of Curt’s powerful TEDx talks: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBMcB6kboLA&t=207s

By doing programs in Oregon prisons, I’ve met many wonderful people who live, or used to live in prison, and made many friends for life. Over these past fifteen years, I’ve also met a lot of beautiful people who, like Curt Tofteland, have spent a lot of time doing programs with women and men in prison, here and around the world—including everyone who has volunteered with Open Hearts Open Minds, and Lavon Starr-Meyers, who supervised our programs at Two Rivers prison. I’d like to introduce you to a few far flung members of my prison family: Zeina Daccache, Ashley Lucas, Lesley Currier, Alokananda Roy and Stratis Panourios. (There are more, but this is probably enough for now.)

In 2012, when we were rehearsing “Twelve Angry Men” at Two Rivers prison, Bushra said she had heard about a film called “12 Angry Lebanese.” I ordered a DVD of the film from CATHARSIS—Lebanese Center for Drama Therapy (http://www.catharsislcdt.org & https://www.facebook.com/search/top) and watched it. Zeina Daccache had directed a production of “12 Angry Men” at Roumieh prison, and made a fantastic documentary film about it. I invited her to come see our production in Oregon. She did. We became great friends. She’s made more films since then. To learn more about this amazing woman and the work she has done, here is a link to a TED talk she gave:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf5akVvHhx4

I met Ashley Lucas at the first Shakespeare in Prisons Conference, at the University of Notre Dame. She was Director of Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP), affiliated with the University of Michigan—the largest Prison Arts organization on Planet Earth. When she was doing research for her book Prison Theatre and the Global Crisis of Incarceration, she came to see our production of “The Winter’s Tale,” and interviewed the actors on the day after the final performance. In the first chapter of her book, she wrote at length about the love which was so much in evidence on the closing night of the play. In a previous issue of “peace, love, happiness & understanding” I wrote about Ashley and her book

(https://openroadpdx.com/event/peace-love-happiness-understanding-9-3-20/).

I was on a panel with Lesley Currier at the first Shakespeare in Prisons Conference in 2013. She is Artistic Director of Marin Shakespeare Company. At San Quentin prison, she and her company have produced many many Shakespeare plays, and original “devised” theatre performances, based on themes from the plays. Here’s a link to Kimani’s “Parallel Play Piece” from September 7, 2012:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWgZNwLuks0

The Marin Shakespeare Company has an extensive archive of performances from San Quentin on their website (https://www.marinshakespeare.org).

At the third Shakespeare in Prisons Conference in San Diego in 2018, I had the extreme good fortune to get a darshan from the Goddess Saraswati, who has incarnated in the form of Alokananda Roy. She has produced dance-theatre productions in prisons in India. The performers were able to get out of prison to take their shows on tour to theaters in cities around India. Here’s a link to the moving story of her “Love Therapy”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OspzzO7gAiw&t=1186s

Had enough links yet? Wait! There’s one more! Early last year the fourth Shakespeare in Prisons Conference hosted Stratis Panourios, from Athens. Here’s a link to a TED talk by him, which eloquently tells the story of his experience directing Shakespeare’s “Tempest” in a prison in Greece:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zMZaUUW_Xs&t=91s

I want to close this BARD’S BIRTHDAY ISSUE of “peace, love, happiness & understanding” with a few notes about books and films about Shakespeare and his plays.

My all-time favorite book about Shakespeare is Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being by Ted Hughes. It’s utterly unlike all the thousands of other books about William Shakespeare. He explores the mythic dimension of Shakespeare’s life and art. It’s the best account I know of Shakespeare’s inner life. I’ve read and re-read it many times. When I get to the end, I start at the beginning again.

Some other favorites include Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human and Hamlet: Poem Unlimited by Harold Bloom. A great book about “Macbeth” is Garry Wills’ Witches and Jesuits. James Shapiro’s books are excellent: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599, The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606, and Shakespeare in a Divided America. For theater makers, Michael Pennington’s “User’s Guides” to “Hamlet,” “Twelfth Night” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” are indispensable. His book Sweet William: Twenty Thousand Hours with Shakespeare is a treasure trove for actors and directors.

As for films, Akira Kurosawa’s 1985 film “Ran,” based on “King Lear,” is the all-time masterpiece. He might have started a trend toward much better film adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays. Kenneth Branagh’s 1993 “Much Ado About Nothing” is a sparkling example. Baz Luhrmann’s imaginative “Romeo + Juliet,” with Leonardo DiCaprio and Clare Danes in the title roles, is highly entertaining. Those who prefer a more traditional staging may prefer Franco Zeffirelli’s gorgeous 1968 film, with Olivia Hussey as Juliet. I had the good fortune to see Adrian Lester play the part of Hamlet in Peter Brook’s production. Best Hamlet ever (according to me)! The play was filmed, and is available on DVD, but the live performance is so vivid in my imagination, that I find the film performance disappointing by comparison. Still, it might be the most brilliant Hamlet performance on film. Mark Rylance played the Duke in the Shakespeare’s Globe production of “Measure for Measure.” If you are intrepid, you can find it on DVD.

Well, that’s about it for now.

Happy Birthday, Will!

Getting to see your plays and read your plays and direct them and play some of the astonishing characters you created, including Hamlet, Lear, Edgar, Feste, Ophelia, Cordelia, and two of the three Weird Sisters, has greatly enriched my life. In closing, let’s imagine that we are the Singer and our Beloved Bard is the object of our song:

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

(Like to the lark at break of day arising)

From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

       For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

       That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

–William Shakespeare, Sonnet 29

peace, love & poetry

Johnny