December 22, 2022 • 29 mins
Is a Shakespeare-obsessed 15 year-old geeky, or totally cool? We meet a group of teens who’ve immersed themselves in Shakespeare to hear why they believe this writer speaks to them more clearly than any other. And we also hear about even younger kids with a very special relationship to the Bard: autistic children, who discover ways to express themselves through a writer from 400 years ago.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. It's a Saturday morning at the Old Globe. I'm
here to meet Declin. I am a little nervous, but
I'm generally feeling good. Okay, good, Well, we're going to
get the nerves to go away. In a second. Decklin's fifteen,
and he had a late night. There was a school dance.
I didn't do much dancing, per se. I mean, I
(00:37):
hope this isn't too controversial, but I'm not really a
big fan of most of the music that they play
at high school dances nowadays, and it's always the same things,
Like could they at least not play different bad music
this time? I wonder. I know Decklin because he spent
the summer enrolled in a program that the Old Globe
runs for teens who want to learn about acting, theater,
(00:59):
and specifically Shakespeare. Declin loves Shakespeare, I mean loves him.
So I had my first encounter with shake sphere, or
my first shakespeareance, if you will, that I can remember
when I was twelve. That shakespeareance was when Decklin performed
in a student production of the Winter's Tale, one of
(01:19):
Shakespeare's last and most moving plays. So I played Autolycus.
Autolocus is the comic lead. He's this small time thief
who wears disguises and runs schemes and even sings a little.
And so we had the two weeks to kind of
schlock together a play and with language that I had
(01:43):
never encountered, and that was really fascinating, quite difficult, but
I really enjoyed it, and Atolecus was like a very
fun character. And it came to the performance and we
were outside and I was hot and sweaty and bellowing
outlines that I had no idea if we got the
inst could understand, and I loved it. So that was
my first encounter with Shakespeare. Yeah, how would you characterize
(02:07):
what excited you about it when you were playing Autolicus?
Shakespeare is just very unique, and like, I can't really
draw a comparison between working on his works and the
works of any other writer or genre or anything. So
I may not even really have the words to describe
working on Shakespeare. And that might be what I love
(02:28):
about it, Declin protests, too much, he really does have
the words to describe it. It also connects to more
largely what excites me in life and what I want
to do with my life, which is leader creativity, but
also like Shakespeare is inescapable. You find it literally etched
at the foots of statues, you see it quoted at weddings,
(02:50):
you see it on stages everywhere. Pretty much every respectable
leader is like performing at least one Shakespeare play a season.
And I wouldn't say that it's just a big thing
for me. I mean it's a big thing for everyone.
It has to be. You can't escape it, and who
would want to. How does it make you feel when
you're at moment, sitting alone in your bedroom, sitting outside
(03:12):
in a garden, leafing through some sonnet or something like that,
what happens to you? I mean it depends. There's certainly
a lot of passages that you know, kind of I mean,
they all kind of filled me with awe, But they're
different strains of awe. I mean, sometimes it's comedy, but
even those, oh, it's just so impressive. And often even
(03:35):
when it seems like a glib joke, it's usually saying
something quite deep. Different strains of awe. I love that
when I hear Declin at the ripe age of fifteen
talk about Shakespeare like that. I remember a line from
the Merchant of Venice. I never knew so young a
body with so old a head. But Declin's not the
(03:56):
only teen with a deep connection to Shakespeare. There's something
about this writer that speaks really powerfully magically, even to
young people. I'm Barry Edelstein, and I run the Old
Globe in San Diego, one of the country's leading Shakespeare theaters,
and this is where there's a will finding Shakespeare from
(04:16):
the Globe and Pushkin industries. Our show discovers Shakespeare in
all sorts of unexpected places and asks what he's doing
there and what his presence means about him and about us.
My companion on this search for Old William is a
friend and colleague with their own deep interest in Shakespeare,
a writer and director who works on stage, screen and TV.
(04:38):
M Weinstein him, Hi, Berry, It's so fun listening to Declin.
He's an amazing guy. I was about his age when
I first discovered Shakespeare, but I was way, way less
articulate about why I love the stuff. Well, I'm not
sure I'm ready to believe that, Barry, but yes, Decklin
is remarkable, though I must say I'm not entirely surprised.
I've done a lot of work on Shakespeare with young
(05:00):
people and the way they deal with them kind of
blows me away. Always. I couldn't agree more because the
work the Globe does with teens is some of the
stuff I love the most. Anyway, it's the stuff that
delights me the most. Like I asked Declan what he
thought it was about Shakespeare that moved him, So just
listen to his answer. Can you talk a little bit
about what the language of Shakespeare, in the text of
(05:21):
Shakespeare's doing that engages you and moves you? Well, you
have some with you. I have my script from Henry five.
Lay it on me, and here, can I take a minute?
Took up my ducks in a row? Yes, sir, do
you have a passage you want to share? I'm not sure.
I've been so busy. I didn't have a terrible amount
(05:42):
of time to prepare for this, but I suppose it
was just because I was. I was reading it earlier
and thinking about it. Um. The passage that I auditioned
with was monologue from Act two, Scene two of the
Right of Henry the Fifth, when Henry five is essentially
chewing out Cambridge scruping Gray for betraying him right, and
(06:04):
it's just a really um power passage that spoke to me. Um,
should I like read it? Yeah? Read some of it? Um,
if you don't mind, see you These English monsters, my
lord of Cambridge, here, this man, and this night for
a few light crowns lightly conspired and sworn unto the
(06:27):
practices of France, to kill us here in Hampton. Oh
thou hast infected the sweetness of friendship? Seem men dutiful?
Why so Didst thou seem they grave and learned? Why
so Didst Thou come they of noble family? Why so
(06:51):
Didst Thou seemed they religious? Why so Didst Thou arrest
them to the answer of the law, and God acquit
them of their practices? Wow, bravo, thank Oh my goodness.
(07:17):
Declin is just great. What a wonderful reading of Henry.
He'll play it for real at some point. I'm sure
Declin reminds me of so many of the teens I've
done Shakespeare with. During the pandemic, I spent six weeks
working with a group of twenty three teenagers to reimagine
Romeo and Juliet. I was scheduled to direct the play
in person, and then when the world shut Down, we
(07:38):
pivoted to zoom and we made this sort of hybrid
theater video digital production. And hearing the show in the
mouths of young people in Lockdown, it isolated from their friends,
watching the world crumble around them was truly humbling. They
found so much humor in moments I never realized were funny,
and they were so angry at the failures of the
adults in the play, just as angry as they were
(08:00):
with the adults failing them During COVID, I realized that
Shakespeare is so powerful for teenagers because adoles is really
when society teaches us to not express that kind of anger,
to not speak up, to not express our feelings, to
suppress who we are. And Shakespeare's characters never do that.
(08:21):
Like Romeo, he cries out, I defy you stars, he
just rails at the injustice of the universe. Exactly when
you're Romeo's age, you don't hold anything in. You say
what you feel, even if it's uncomfortable or gnarlier. It's
difficult to hear. For me when I was a teen
and for the teens I worked with, Shakespeare's a sort
(08:41):
of beautiful remedy. Society wants us to sit down and
shut up. But Shakespeare demands the exact opposite. We think
about Shakespeare being forced on teens in school, all dreary
and boring in some English class, to be suffered through.
But Declin and I think the kids you worked with
have found a way to love him on their own terms.
(09:03):
The summer Shakespeare program that Declin was in at the
Globe had about twenty other kids in it. They made
their own production of Henry the Fifth, not just with
the Shakespeare text, but with their own writing too. Some
of them composed music, some choreographed dance and movement. It
was amazing. We'll hear about it, and we'll hear from
some of the remarkable young people in it after a
(09:25):
short break a blob. I know this, and thus I
challenge it. Those are teenage theater kids working on some
(09:45):
Shakespeare in a summer program at the Old Globe. They're great.
The program's about a month long, and it's a mini
theater conservatory. Every day. There are acting classes, voice classes, movement,
all the training a professional actor would get, but geared
for teens. For many summers now, I've been watching amazing
young people immerse themselves in Shakespeare. In this program, and
(10:08):
this year I wanted to learn a little bit more
about what this writing means to them, so I asked
three students, Amara, Samantha, and Zach to keep audio diaries
all summer long. We put together a little sound montage
of their experiences so that we could follow them from
beginning to middle to end. Wow, that sounds amazing. I
can't wait to hear it. You'll hear from Mamara first.
(10:31):
So I'm here to journalize my Shakespeare experiences. My first
day there, it was really nice having everyone just like
ensembled in the same room and meeting each other. I
was like, how are you guys such cool people? From ahead?
(10:53):
And thus he greets your magazine. Hello, my name is
Samantha Rio. We are currently on week two and we
are going to be embarking on Henry the Fifth by Shakespeare.
We men have hersh and means sucidence. So the castles
came out, and I was a little bit disappointed because
I really wanted to play a king, mainly because I
(11:16):
wanted to give a king a more feminine power, and
also because I wanted to wear crap. We were casts
this weekend, and I'm happy with my roles. I actually
got I got king of friends. I happened not to
be a king. I happen to be a teenage girl.
So I'm looking for how to be powerful. I'm looking
for how to have this mindset that I don't have
(11:36):
on a daily basis, and it has been empowering. Honestly.
It's just like Shaddy, you can be a king if
you really desire. All right, that's pretty get Paul. We're
gonna give a board time. My name is Zach Fon Baron.
I performed by monologue for my first time today. The
(12:01):
language is just really thick. Learning to read Shakespeare it's
just so different. No, not not easy at all. On
Thursday we did I Am Big Contameter. That wasn't so fun.
I'm not gonna lie. I have to seene one Henry
is Zach once more, on to the breach, dear friends
(12:23):
once more. I've finally gotten my monologue to a place
that I'm happy with. But now that I know what
everything means, it's really nice to know that I am
capable of doing this text. When the blast of war
blows in our ears, that imitate the action of a type.
Oh for he was a fire that would have said
(12:45):
the bride is Kevin. I'm really really nervous um that
I'm going to butcher my lines. You know, one shot,
one shot today, make this good. He will compel and
bids you in the battles of the Lord to deliver
up the crowd, to take mercy on the poor souls
for whom this hungry war opens its vastly Joss too,
(13:05):
Oh my god, you had to go big or go
home when it comes to ship experience acting. That's what
I have learned. The bigger that it's done, the easier
it is to understand from an outside perspective. Oh god,
I get to do a fight scene and and stab
five people with a sword on the moment itself is
(13:29):
just epic. That's a really great play. I mean, this
whole thing really is vulnerability or in front of people.
You're reading your lines loud and loud. It's just putting
(13:50):
yourself on the front lines and being your character over yourself. Really,
so Polp first and York all haggled over comes to him.
We're in gore HeLa. I mean, it's been so so
incredibly open and truthful to have like a group of
people that are, like, you know, honest and loving is
(14:19):
just wonderful to me. The King of France makes Rock
of daughter Paces. I like to describe it as a
mentos when you put mentos and coke. Like me being
off stage is when you first put in the mentos
and you see the coke sizzling, and then yeah, when
it blows up as me on stage, when I get
(14:41):
to release everything, everything, everything, everything, to the full course
of their glory. That was really wonderful. Those three young
people are so smart and sharp and also so open
(15:02):
and available to each other and to Shakespeare, and just
like Dec Glenn, they are also so sweet and so funny,
and they're so like professional actors in a million ways.
I mean, listening to them struggle their way through iapic pentameter,
it's just like being in a rehearsal room at the
Old Globe. It can be hard work and sometimes you
(15:23):
just bang your head against it. It was so great
to hear Amara and Samantha grapple with the roles they
were cast in, two young women who really wanted to
experience what it feels like to wield power like grown
ups do and also like men do. And I'm telling
you right now, Am the next time I direct to
Shakespeare play. I'm going to borrow Samantha's image of how
doing this stuff is like dropping mentos and coke. You
(15:45):
have to release everything, everything, everything. Oh, it's wonderful. It's
also very moving, you know. Alamara talking about the vulnerability
that she found in herself as she explored this work.
That's what I love the most, how Shakespeare helped her
find an openness in herself. Yes, and how immersing herself
in Shakespeare side by side with a bunch of other
kids her age sort of bonded them together. That's shake
(16:09):
spear making community. These plays, this Shakespeare, they have a
special power. They draw people toward each other, and then
also they confer a kind of eloquence. They help make
sense of a bewildering world. Yes, and they can be
a way to express the intensely emotional things you feel
but don't quite know how to say. When you're young
(16:31):
and you're unsure of your own voice, when you feel
you're not being heard, it can be so liberating to
have this big language, this big energy to put into
the world. And the teens in the Globe's program are
not the only group of young people who are feeling
this sense of voicelessness. I've found another group discovering this
kind of liberating self expression in Shakespeare. Their kids too,
(16:54):
and they're even younger than the ones we've just been
listening to. Autistic children. We'll hear about them and they're Shakespeare.
After a break in the two thousands, the Royal Shakespeare Company,
(17:15):
the Great English Theater established a residency in America at
Ohio State University. One of the actors in the company
was Kelly Hunter. She had devised something called the Hunter
Heartbeat method. It connects Shakespeare to autism. I've heard about
the Hunter Heartbeat method. It's remarkable at Ohio State. One
of Hunter's students was Robin Post, who later went on
(17:36):
to teach at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She's
doing amazing things there, connecting Shakespeare with autistic children through
the Hunter Heartbeat method. Robin spoke to me about her
work and also about Kelly Hunter and how her method
came to be. She'd been working in communities that had
(17:57):
no access to the arts and had found that there
were children she wasn't able to reach, and those children
ended up being children on the spectrum. And she created
this work in an effort to target the core fee
of autism and reach those children. So I think she
was going into communities in England and expecting the narrow typical,
(18:22):
and there was a disconnect. She found children were doing
things like stemming, which is a self soothing mechanism that
is physicalized, or they were nonverbal, or we're talking rapid fire,
or any number of behaviors that children on the spectrum
(18:44):
might exhibit. She was finding that she wasn't able to
connect with those So Hunter had a kind of Eureka moment.
She found that she could reach these children through one
of the most essential features of Shakespeare's language. Rhythms sort
of started to come into play. So like the iambic contameter.
(19:04):
Iambic contameter again, right, the basic building block of Shakespeare's
It's like the time signature of his poetry. M Just
let me do a quick explanation. So and I am
is a unit of two syllables. The first is unstressed
and the second is stressed. De dump, So New York
is iambic penta means five meter, means count. So iambic
(19:26):
pentameter is a five count of iams ten syllables de
dump de dump de dump, de dump de dump, And
that's the essential rhythm of Shakespeare. The quality of mercy
is not strained but soft, what late through yonder window breaks.
We don't say the lines that way, of course, but
that's the basic beat underlying the way Shakespeare builds his writing.
(19:49):
So back to Robin Post. So we're tapping into the
rhythm of the language, we're tapping into our own rhythms,
and then we're connecting to the rhythm of everyone in
the room, and that alone creates trust immediately. Kelly Hunter
named her approach the heartbeat method because the human heart,
(20:10):
like the Shakespearean line is iambicum bum bum bum. And
so we start all of our workshops and every production
with this heartbeat hello, where we literally tap out the
rhythm of the heartbeat on our heart with our hands
and we say hellollo hello, for as long as it
(20:32):
takes for us to all be in the same space
and same heart space together. Really, so do you move
from the heartbeat into fragments of shakespeare text, is that
the bridge that gets built. What occurs is we have
(20:52):
this moment of introduction around the heartbeat, and we're all
just tapping out our heartbeats and we're saying hello, and
we're literally saying hello to our own hearts, hello to
each other's hearts. And then we do something called throwing
the face, and so this incorporates huge expression. And so
(21:14):
I might say, we're going to make a happy hello,
and so we go around the circle one at a
time and do a happy hello, and it introduce and
over the top, almost mask like expression of happiness. Yeah yeah, yeah,
yeah yeah. And then once that's introduced, then Caliban is introduced.
(21:42):
Caliban is a very angry monster, and an actor will
model some of Caliban's text and behavior. Another actor will say,
this island's mine, this island's mind. That's Caliban's cry from
the heart. It is. And let me just take a
(22:03):
second to remind our listeners about Caliban and the Tempest.
The Tempest is set on a romote island somewhere, and
it's ruled by this guy named Prospero. He's a wizard
with supernatural powers and he uses them to force the
native population to work for him. There's an airy spirit
named Ariel, and there's a half man, half fish, as
(22:25):
Shakespeare describes him, called Caliban. Yeah, there are a lot
of political readings of the play, which have to do
with the European colonialism and the oppression of native populations,
and they center on Caliban. He's this fascinating character who's
in a way clownish, in a way monstrous, and in
a way deeply childlike, totally sympathetic. I asked Robin Post
(22:47):
what Caliban is doing in the middle of the Hunter
heartbeat method. There's a sense of Caliban being trapped in
his own body and trapped on an island and not
able to express himself in the way that he wants to. Maybe,
and so there is a real relationship between what it
might feel like to be on the spectrum and be Caliban.
(23:10):
And we've actually had a recent production wherein a child
told her mother for the first time, I understand why
Caliban is so sad. I have trouble I'm getting emotional,
I have trouble communicating, I have trouble speaking. I understand
(23:31):
why he's so frustrated. And this child's mother said, that's
the first time she shared with me that feeling and
that experience that she's had. Shakespeare helps these children express themselves,
That's what we heard from the teens earlier. It's the
same phenomenon. But these kids are much much younger, as
(23:52):
young as five six years old. So I wondered if
Robin had any thoughts about the special nature of Shakespeare
that makes this connection possible for children that small, The
largess of the characters, and the emotional life that is
so big and immediate, and the expression that is so
(24:15):
like larger than life is easily accessible. There is often
a I can't recognize happiness, anger or sadness, etc. And
not only don't I recognize it, I can't express it.
And so Shakespeare makes that very easy. Shakespeare makes it
(24:40):
so easy that sometimes his language becomes literally the one
these children start to speak. Many of these children in
past working with them will see us out somewhere in
the world and we'll talk through Shakespeare to us. So,
in other words, rather than you know, saying hello, how
(25:03):
are you, they'll use some Shakespeare text to connect wow. Yeah.
And it's been you know, just amazing to see them
on the playground somewhere randomly, or out in the park
and you know, I go, I go, I'll miss you
so or something you know happens and you're like, WHOA,
what extraordinary? A six year old autistic kid using Shakespeare
(25:37):
to express themselves when they previously couldn't. It's so moving,
it's beautiful, it is I find the whole idea of
children and teens making connections with Shakespeare to be really special.
M Maybe that's because this material just means so much
to me, or maybe it's because I was hit by
its lightning when I was their age. But you know,
(25:59):
I think there's something else too. This generation of kids
is bombarded with content, words, music, images, memes, tweets, snapchats, TikTok's.
It's fast, it's short, and it's ephemeral, gone in a second.
Shakespeare is the opposite of all those things. Shakespeare moves
(26:19):
more slowly, takes more time, and it's eternal. It's been
around for centuries and it's going to stay around for
many more. I agree with you, Barry. In Robin Post
and Kelly Hunter's experiences with young autistic kids, and in
the voices of the teens we heard earlier, and in
my experience working with teens over the years, the connection
(26:40):
with Shakespeare is deep, profound. Time moves slower with Shakespeare,
You're right, and it allows the material to go somewhere
very deep in these young people. Deeper than any other
media they encounter, might go deeper than did ever plummet sound.
As Shakespeare puts it, these young people are really inspiring.
(27:00):
They're making Shakespeare theirs, finding themselves in him and his stories.
I'm so excited to see where they take him. I'm
excited to see what Declan does with his Shakespeare. Am
do you mind if we check in again with him? Oh? Yes,
please more, Declin. So I thanked him for taking some
time to talk with me. Thanks for coming in. Yeah,
(27:22):
thank you so much for inviting me. I mean, I've
been in Barry Edelstein's office. That's amazing, very kind to say.
So you'll be in here many more times in the future,
I promise, And one day it's going to be your office, Declin.
What do you think of that? I'm not sure about that.
Oh we'll see. I can't wait to see me neither.
(27:52):
Where there's a will. Finding Shakespeare is written and hosted
by me Barry Edelstein. My co host is m Weinstein.
Our show was produced by Buffy Gorilla and Nisha Vencott,
with assistant producers Jennifer Sanchez and Salman Ahad Khan. Our
executive producers are Katherine Jr. From Pushkin and Alex Lewis
and John Myers from Row Home Productions. Our editor is
(28:14):
Audrey Dilling. Our mix engineer is Justin Berger. Our theme
is an original composition by Hannis Brown. Samuel Buzid is
our fact checker. Vicki Merrick is our voice coach. Our
show was recorded at Bill Corkery Productions, Leopard Studio and
The Old Globe. Where There's a Will is a co
production of Pushkin Industries and The Old Globe thanks to
(28:36):
Pushkin's development team LEETL. Mulad and Justine Lange. Barry Edelstein.
That's Me is Erna Fincy Veturbie artistic director and Timothy J.
Shields is Audrey S. Geisel, Managing director of the Old Globe.
For The Globe thanks to sound director Paul Peterson and
Assistant to the sound director Evan Eason, Director of Marketing
(28:57):
and Communications Dave Henson, Assistant to the artistic and managing
directors Carolyn Budd, The Theodore and Audrey Geiselfund provides leadership
support for the Old Globe's year round activities. To learn
more about the Tony Award winning the Old Globe one
of America's leading regional theater companies. Visit the Old Globe
dot org. If you love this show, consider subscribing to
(29:19):
Pushkin Plus, offering bonus content and add free listening across
our network for four dollars and ninety nine cents a month.
Find the Pushkin Plus channel on Apple Podcasts or at
pushkin dot fm. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
(29:39):
Where there's a will, We'll be back January fifth. Thanks
for listening.
Pushkin. It's a Saturday morning at the Old Globe. I'm
here to meet Declin. I am a little nervous, but
I'm generally feeling good. Okay, good, Well, we're going to
get the nerves to go away. In a second. Decklin's fifteen,
and he had a late night. There was a school dance.
I didn't do much dancing, per se. I mean, I
(00:37):
hope this isn't too controversial, but I'm not really a
big fan of most of the music that they play
at high school dances nowadays, and it's always the same things,
Like could they at least not play different bad music
this time? I wonder. I know Decklin because he spent
the summer enrolled in a program that the Old Globe
runs for teens who want to learn about acting, theater,
(00:59):
and specifically Shakespeare. Declin loves Shakespeare, I mean loves him.
So I had my first encounter with shake sphere, or
my first shakespeareance, if you will, that I can remember
when I was twelve. That shakespeareance was when Decklin performed
in a student production of the Winter's Tale, one of
(01:19):
Shakespeare's last and most moving plays. So I played Autolycus.
Autolocus is the comic lead. He's this small time thief
who wears disguises and runs schemes and even sings a little.
And so we had the two weeks to kind of
schlock together a play and with language that I had
(01:43):
never encountered, and that was really fascinating, quite difficult, but
I really enjoyed it, and Atolecus was like a very
fun character. And it came to the performance and we
were outside and I was hot and sweaty and bellowing
outlines that I had no idea if we got the
inst could understand, and I loved it. So that was
my first encounter with Shakespeare. Yeah, how would you characterize
(02:07):
what excited you about it when you were playing Autolicus?
Shakespeare is just very unique, and like, I can't really
draw a comparison between working on his works and the
works of any other writer or genre or anything. So
I may not even really have the words to describe
working on Shakespeare. And that might be what I love
(02:28):
about it, Declin protests, too much, he really does have
the words to describe it. It also connects to more
largely what excites me in life and what I want
to do with my life, which is leader creativity, but
also like Shakespeare is inescapable. You find it literally etched
at the foots of statues, you see it quoted at weddings,
(02:50):
you see it on stages everywhere. Pretty much every respectable
leader is like performing at least one Shakespeare play a season.
And I wouldn't say that it's just a big thing
for me. I mean it's a big thing for everyone.
It has to be. You can't escape it, and who
would want to. How does it make you feel when
you're at moment, sitting alone in your bedroom, sitting outside
(03:12):
in a garden, leafing through some sonnet or something like that,
what happens to you? I mean it depends. There's certainly
a lot of passages that you know, kind of I mean,
they all kind of filled me with awe, But they're
different strains of awe. I mean, sometimes it's comedy, but
even those, oh, it's just so impressive. And often even
(03:35):
when it seems like a glib joke, it's usually saying
something quite deep. Different strains of awe. I love that
when I hear Declin at the ripe age of fifteen
talk about Shakespeare like that. I remember a line from
the Merchant of Venice. I never knew so young a
body with so old a head. But Declin's not the
(03:56):
only teen with a deep connection to Shakespeare. There's something
about this writer that speaks really powerfully magically, even to
young people. I'm Barry Edelstein, and I run the Old
Globe in San Diego, one of the country's leading Shakespeare theaters,
and this is where there's a will finding Shakespeare from
(04:16):
the Globe and Pushkin industries. Our show discovers Shakespeare in
all sorts of unexpected places and asks what he's doing
there and what his presence means about him and about us.
My companion on this search for Old William is a
friend and colleague with their own deep interest in Shakespeare,
a writer and director who works on stage, screen and TV.
(04:38):
M Weinstein him, Hi, Berry, It's so fun listening to Declin.
He's an amazing guy. I was about his age when
I first discovered Shakespeare, but I was way, way less
articulate about why I love the stuff. Well, I'm not
sure I'm ready to believe that, Barry, but yes, Decklin
is remarkable, though I must say I'm not entirely surprised.
I've done a lot of work on Shakespeare with young
(05:00):
people and the way they deal with them kind of
blows me away. Always. I couldn't agree more because the
work the Globe does with teens is some of the
stuff I love the most. Anyway, it's the stuff that
delights me the most. Like I asked Declan what he
thought it was about Shakespeare that moved him, So just
listen to his answer. Can you talk a little bit
about what the language of Shakespeare, in the text of
(05:21):
Shakespeare's doing that engages you and moves you? Well, you
have some with you. I have my script from Henry five.
Lay it on me, and here, can I take a minute?
Took up my ducks in a row? Yes, sir, do
you have a passage you want to share? I'm not sure.
I've been so busy. I didn't have a terrible amount
(05:42):
of time to prepare for this, but I suppose it
was just because I was. I was reading it earlier
and thinking about it. Um. The passage that I auditioned
with was monologue from Act two, Scene two of the
Right of Henry the Fifth, when Henry five is essentially
chewing out Cambridge scruping Gray for betraying him right, and
(06:04):
it's just a really um power passage that spoke to me. Um,
should I like read it? Yeah? Read some of it? Um,
if you don't mind, see you These English monsters, my
lord of Cambridge, here, this man, and this night for
a few light crowns lightly conspired and sworn unto the
(06:27):
practices of France, to kill us here in Hampton. Oh
thou hast infected the sweetness of friendship? Seem men dutiful?
Why so Didst thou seem they grave and learned? Why
so Didst Thou come they of noble family? Why so
(06:51):
Didst Thou seemed they religious? Why so Didst Thou arrest
them to the answer of the law, and God acquit
them of their practices? Wow, bravo, thank Oh my goodness.
(07:17):
Declin is just great. What a wonderful reading of Henry.
He'll play it for real at some point. I'm sure
Declin reminds me of so many of the teens I've
done Shakespeare with. During the pandemic, I spent six weeks
working with a group of twenty three teenagers to reimagine
Romeo and Juliet. I was scheduled to direct the play
in person, and then when the world shut Down, we
(07:38):
pivoted to zoom and we made this sort of hybrid
theater video digital production. And hearing the show in the
mouths of young people in Lockdown, it isolated from their friends,
watching the world crumble around them was truly humbling. They
found so much humor in moments I never realized were funny,
and they were so angry at the failures of the
adults in the play, just as angry as they were
(08:00):
with the adults failing them During COVID, I realized that
Shakespeare is so powerful for teenagers because adoles is really
when society teaches us to not express that kind of anger,
to not speak up, to not express our feelings, to
suppress who we are. And Shakespeare's characters never do that.
(08:21):
Like Romeo, he cries out, I defy you stars, he
just rails at the injustice of the universe. Exactly when
you're Romeo's age, you don't hold anything in. You say
what you feel, even if it's uncomfortable or gnarlier. It's
difficult to hear. For me when I was a teen
and for the teens I worked with, Shakespeare's a sort
(08:41):
of beautiful remedy. Society wants us to sit down and
shut up. But Shakespeare demands the exact opposite. We think
about Shakespeare being forced on teens in school, all dreary
and boring in some English class, to be suffered through.
But Declin and I think the kids you worked with
have found a way to love him on their own terms.
(09:03):
The summer Shakespeare program that Declin was in at the
Globe had about twenty other kids in it. They made
their own production of Henry the Fifth, not just with
the Shakespeare text, but with their own writing too. Some
of them composed music, some choreographed dance and movement. It
was amazing. We'll hear about it, and we'll hear from
some of the remarkable young people in it after a
(09:25):
short break a blob. I know this, and thus I
challenge it. Those are teenage theater kids working on some
(09:45):
Shakespeare in a summer program at the Old Globe. They're great.
The program's about a month long, and it's a mini
theater conservatory. Every day. There are acting classes, voice classes, movement,
all the training a professional actor would get, but geared
for teens. For many summers now, I've been watching amazing
young people immerse themselves in Shakespeare. In this program, and
(10:08):
this year I wanted to learn a little bit more
about what this writing means to them, so I asked
three students, Amara, Samantha, and Zach to keep audio diaries
all summer long. We put together a little sound montage
of their experiences so that we could follow them from
beginning to middle to end. Wow, that sounds amazing. I
can't wait to hear it. You'll hear from Mamara first.
(10:31):
So I'm here to journalize my Shakespeare experiences. My first
day there, it was really nice having everyone just like
ensembled in the same room and meeting each other. I
was like, how are you guys such cool people? From ahead?
(10:53):
And thus he greets your magazine. Hello, my name is
Samantha Rio. We are currently on week two and we
are going to be embarking on Henry the Fifth by Shakespeare.
We men have hersh and means sucidence. So the castles
came out, and I was a little bit disappointed because
I really wanted to play a king, mainly because I
(11:16):
wanted to give a king a more feminine power, and
also because I wanted to wear crap. We were casts
this weekend, and I'm happy with my roles. I actually
got I got king of friends. I happened not to
be a king. I happen to be a teenage girl.
So I'm looking for how to be powerful. I'm looking
for how to have this mindset that I don't have
(11:36):
on a daily basis, and it has been empowering. Honestly.
It's just like Shaddy, you can be a king if
you really desire. All right, that's pretty get Paul. We're
gonna give a board time. My name is Zach Fon Baron.
I performed by monologue for my first time today. The
(12:01):
language is just really thick. Learning to read Shakespeare it's
just so different. No, not not easy at all. On
Thursday we did I Am Big Contameter. That wasn't so fun.
I'm not gonna lie. I have to seene one Henry
is Zach once more, on to the breach, dear friends
(12:23):
once more. I've finally gotten my monologue to a place
that I'm happy with. But now that I know what
everything means, it's really nice to know that I am
capable of doing this text. When the blast of war
blows in our ears, that imitate the action of a type.
Oh for he was a fire that would have said
(12:45):
the bride is Kevin. I'm really really nervous um that
I'm going to butcher my lines. You know, one shot,
one shot today, make this good. He will compel and
bids you in the battles of the Lord to deliver
up the crowd, to take mercy on the poor souls
for whom this hungry war opens its vastly Joss too,
(13:05):
Oh my god, you had to go big or go
home when it comes to ship experience acting. That's what
I have learned. The bigger that it's done, the easier
it is to understand from an outside perspective. Oh god,
I get to do a fight scene and and stab
five people with a sword on the moment itself is
(13:29):
just epic. That's a really great play. I mean, this
whole thing really is vulnerability or in front of people.
You're reading your lines loud and loud. It's just putting
(13:50):
yourself on the front lines and being your character over yourself. Really,
so Polp first and York all haggled over comes to him.
We're in gore HeLa. I mean, it's been so so
incredibly open and truthful to have like a group of
people that are, like, you know, honest and loving is
(14:19):
just wonderful to me. The King of France makes Rock
of daughter Paces. I like to describe it as a
mentos when you put mentos and coke. Like me being
off stage is when you first put in the mentos
and you see the coke sizzling, and then yeah, when
it blows up as me on stage, when I get
(14:41):
to release everything, everything, everything, everything, to the full course
of their glory. That was really wonderful. Those three young
people are so smart and sharp and also so open
(15:02):
and available to each other and to Shakespeare, and just
like Dec Glenn, they are also so sweet and so funny,
and they're so like professional actors in a million ways.
I mean, listening to them struggle their way through iapic pentameter,
it's just like being in a rehearsal room at the
Old Globe. It can be hard work and sometimes you
(15:23):
just bang your head against it. It was so great
to hear Amara and Samantha grapple with the roles they
were cast in, two young women who really wanted to
experience what it feels like to wield power like grown
ups do and also like men do. And I'm telling
you right now, Am the next time I direct to
Shakespeare play. I'm going to borrow Samantha's image of how
doing this stuff is like dropping mentos and coke. You
(15:45):
have to release everything, everything, everything. Oh, it's wonderful. It's
also very moving, you know. Alamara talking about the vulnerability
that she found in herself as she explored this work.
That's what I love the most, how Shakespeare helped her
find an openness in herself. Yes, and how immersing herself
in Shakespeare side by side with a bunch of other
kids her age sort of bonded them together. That's shake
(16:09):
spear making community. These plays, this Shakespeare, they have a
special power. They draw people toward each other, and then
also they confer a kind of eloquence. They help make
sense of a bewildering world. Yes, and they can be
a way to express the intensely emotional things you feel
but don't quite know how to say. When you're young
(16:31):
and you're unsure of your own voice, when you feel
you're not being heard, it can be so liberating to
have this big language, this big energy to put into
the world. And the teens in the Globe's program are
not the only group of young people who are feeling
this sense of voicelessness. I've found another group discovering this
kind of liberating self expression in Shakespeare. Their kids too,
(16:54):
and they're even younger than the ones we've just been
listening to. Autistic children. We'll hear about them and they're Shakespeare.
After a break in the two thousands, the Royal Shakespeare Company,
(17:15):
the Great English Theater established a residency in America at
Ohio State University. One of the actors in the company
was Kelly Hunter. She had devised something called the Hunter
Heartbeat method. It connects Shakespeare to autism. I've heard about
the Hunter Heartbeat method. It's remarkable at Ohio State. One
of Hunter's students was Robin Post, who later went on
(17:36):
to teach at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She's
doing amazing things there, connecting Shakespeare with autistic children through
the Hunter Heartbeat method. Robin spoke to me about her
work and also about Kelly Hunter and how her method
came to be. She'd been working in communities that had
(17:57):
no access to the arts and had found that there
were children she wasn't able to reach, and those children
ended up being children on the spectrum. And she created
this work in an effort to target the core fee
of autism and reach those children. So I think she
was going into communities in England and expecting the narrow typical,
(18:22):
and there was a disconnect. She found children were doing
things like stemming, which is a self soothing mechanism that
is physicalized, or they were nonverbal, or we're talking rapid fire,
or any number of behaviors that children on the spectrum
(18:44):
might exhibit. She was finding that she wasn't able to
connect with those So Hunter had a kind of Eureka moment.
She found that she could reach these children through one
of the most essential features of Shakespeare's language. Rhythms sort
of started to come into play. So like the iambic contameter.
(19:04):
Iambic contameter again, right, the basic building block of Shakespeare's
It's like the time signature of his poetry. M Just
let me do a quick explanation. So and I am
is a unit of two syllables. The first is unstressed
and the second is stressed. De dump, So New York
is iambic penta means five meter, means count. So iambic
(19:26):
pentameter is a five count of iams ten syllables de
dump de dump de dump, de dump de dump, And
that's the essential rhythm of Shakespeare. The quality of mercy
is not strained but soft, what late through yonder window breaks.
We don't say the lines that way, of course, but
that's the basic beat underlying the way Shakespeare builds his writing.
(19:49):
So back to Robin Post. So we're tapping into the
rhythm of the language, we're tapping into our own rhythms,
and then we're connecting to the rhythm of everyone in
the room, and that alone creates trust immediately. Kelly Hunter
named her approach the heartbeat method because the human heart,
(20:10):
like the Shakespearean line is iambicum bum bum bum. And
so we start all of our workshops and every production
with this heartbeat hello, where we literally tap out the
rhythm of the heartbeat on our heart with our hands
and we say hellollo hello, for as long as it
(20:32):
takes for us to all be in the same space
and same heart space together. Really, so do you move
from the heartbeat into fragments of shakespeare text, is that
the bridge that gets built. What occurs is we have
(20:52):
this moment of introduction around the heartbeat, and we're all
just tapping out our heartbeats and we're saying hello, and
we're literally saying hello to our own hearts, hello to
each other's hearts. And then we do something called throwing
the face, and so this incorporates huge expression. And so
(21:14):
I might say, we're going to make a happy hello,
and so we go around the circle one at a
time and do a happy hello, and it introduce and
over the top, almost mask like expression of happiness. Yeah yeah, yeah,
yeah yeah. And then once that's introduced, then Caliban is introduced.
(21:42):
Caliban is a very angry monster, and an actor will
model some of Caliban's text and behavior. Another actor will say,
this island's mine, this island's mind. That's Caliban's cry from
the heart. It is. And let me just take a
(22:03):
second to remind our listeners about Caliban and the Tempest.
The Tempest is set on a romote island somewhere, and
it's ruled by this guy named Prospero. He's a wizard
with supernatural powers and he uses them to force the
native population to work for him. There's an airy spirit
named Ariel, and there's a half man, half fish, as
(22:25):
Shakespeare describes him, called Caliban. Yeah, there are a lot
of political readings of the play, which have to do
with the European colonialism and the oppression of native populations,
and they center on Caliban. He's this fascinating character who's
in a way clownish, in a way monstrous, and in
a way deeply childlike, totally sympathetic. I asked Robin Post
(22:47):
what Caliban is doing in the middle of the Hunter
heartbeat method. There's a sense of Caliban being trapped in
his own body and trapped on an island and not
able to express himself in the way that he wants to. Maybe,
and so there is a real relationship between what it
might feel like to be on the spectrum and be Caliban.
(23:10):
And we've actually had a recent production wherein a child
told her mother for the first time, I understand why
Caliban is so sad. I have trouble I'm getting emotional,
I have trouble communicating, I have trouble speaking. I understand
(23:31):
why he's so frustrated. And this child's mother said, that's
the first time she shared with me that feeling and
that experience that she's had. Shakespeare helps these children express themselves,
That's what we heard from the teens earlier. It's the
same phenomenon. But these kids are much much younger, as
(23:52):
young as five six years old. So I wondered if
Robin had any thoughts about the special nature of Shakespeare
that makes this connection possible for children that small, The
largess of the characters, and the emotional life that is
so big and immediate, and the expression that is so
(24:15):
like larger than life is easily accessible. There is often
a I can't recognize happiness, anger or sadness, etc. And
not only don't I recognize it, I can't express it.
And so Shakespeare makes that very easy. Shakespeare makes it
(24:40):
so easy that sometimes his language becomes literally the one
these children start to speak. Many of these children in
past working with them will see us out somewhere in
the world and we'll talk through Shakespeare to us. So,
in other words, rather than you know, saying hello, how
(25:03):
are you, they'll use some Shakespeare text to connect wow. Yeah.
And it's been you know, just amazing to see them
on the playground somewhere randomly, or out in the park
and you know, I go, I go, I'll miss you
so or something you know happens and you're like, WHOA,
what extraordinary? A six year old autistic kid using Shakespeare
(25:37):
to express themselves when they previously couldn't. It's so moving,
it's beautiful, it is I find the whole idea of
children and teens making connections with Shakespeare to be really special.
M Maybe that's because this material just means so much
to me, or maybe it's because I was hit by
its lightning when I was their age. But you know,
(25:59):
I think there's something else too. This generation of kids
is bombarded with content, words, music, images, memes, tweets, snapchats, TikTok's.
It's fast, it's short, and it's ephemeral, gone in a second.
Shakespeare is the opposite of all those things. Shakespeare moves
(26:19):
more slowly, takes more time, and it's eternal. It's been
around for centuries and it's going to stay around for
many more. I agree with you, Barry. In Robin Post
and Kelly Hunter's experiences with young autistic kids, and in
the voices of the teens we heard earlier, and in
my experience working with teens over the years, the connection
(26:40):
with Shakespeare is deep, profound. Time moves slower with Shakespeare,
You're right, and it allows the material to go somewhere
very deep in these young people. Deeper than any other
media they encounter, might go deeper than did ever plummet sound.
As Shakespeare puts it, these young people are really inspiring.
(27:00):
They're making Shakespeare theirs, finding themselves in him and his stories.
I'm so excited to see where they take him. I'm
excited to see what Declan does with his Shakespeare. Am
do you mind if we check in again with him? Oh? Yes,
please more, Declin. So I thanked him for taking some
time to talk with me. Thanks for coming in. Yeah,
(27:22):
thank you so much for inviting me. I mean, I've
been in Barry Edelstein's office. That's amazing, very kind to say.
So you'll be in here many more times in the future,
I promise, And one day it's going to be your office, Declin.
What do you think of that? I'm not sure about that.
Oh we'll see. I can't wait to see me neither.
(27:52):
Where there's a will. Finding Shakespeare is written and hosted
by me Barry Edelstein. My co host is m Weinstein.
Our show was produced by Buffy Gorilla and Nisha Vencott,
with assistant producers Jennifer Sanchez and Salman Ahad Khan. Our
executive producers are Katherine Jr. From Pushkin and Alex Lewis
and John Myers from Row Home Productions. Our editor is
(28:14):
Audrey Dilling. Our mix engineer is Justin Berger. Our theme
is an original composition by Hannis Brown. Samuel Buzid is
our fact checker. Vicki Merrick is our voice coach. Our
show was recorded at Bill Corkery Productions, Leopard Studio and
The Old Globe. Where There's a Will is a co
production of Pushkin Industries and The Old Globe thanks to
(28:36):
Pushkin's development team LEETL. Mulad and Justine Lange. Barry Edelstein.
That's Me is Erna Fincy Veturbie artistic director and Timothy J.
Shields is Audrey S. Geisel, Managing director of the Old Globe.
For The Globe thanks to sound director Paul Peterson and
Assistant to the sound director Evan Eason, Director of Marketing
(28:57):
and Communications Dave Henson, Assistant to the artistic and managing
directors Carolyn Budd, The Theodore and Audrey Geiselfund provides leadership
support for the Old Globe's year round activities. To learn
more about the Tony Award winning the Old Globe one
of America's leading regional theater companies. Visit the Old Globe
dot org. If you love this show, consider subscribing to
(29:19):
Pushkin Plus, offering bonus content and add free listening across
our network for four dollars and ninety nine cents a month.
Find the Pushkin Plus channel on Apple Podcasts or at
pushkin dot fm. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
(29:39):
Where there's a will, We'll be back January fifth. Thanks
for listening.
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