Shakespeare on Toast

First, a very happy 448th birthday to Will… Your work never ceases to amaze. Well done. Take the rest of the day off.

Now! This coming Star Wars Day, I’ll be giving a talk at the British Library based on the CD of Shakespeare sonnets, speeches and scenes I curated for the BL.

Together with a fab line-up of actors, we’ll intercut the blah-blah-blah by performing speeches & scenes from Shakespeare in Original Pronunciation. Some will be from the CD, some won’t have been heard in OP for over 400 years… Come one, come all…!

For details of the event, and to purchase tickets, click here…

How did Shakespeare sound to the audiences of the day?

Ben Crystal, together with actors from the company formed for the new British Library Shakespeare’s Original Pronunciation CD, offer us a rare chance to hear new meanings uncovered, new jokes revealed and poetic effects enhanced.

‘Shakespeare’s Original Pronunciation’ is currently available on CD & to Download here.

You can have a sneak preview to Sonnet 116, Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet here…

Last month I recorded Sonnet 141 for an amazing forthcoming iPad App featuring Sir Patrick Stewart, David Tennant and Fiona Shaw.

Produced by Illuminations Media, Faber and Faber, Arden Shakespeare and Touch Press:

Faber and Faber, Touch Press, Illuminations and The Arden Shakespeare are delighted to announce that they are in the final stages of producing a spectacular edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets for the Apple iPad. The title features specially filmed performances of all 154 sonnets by a stellar cast that includes Fiona Shaw, Sir Patrick Stewart and David Tennant. It also features the complete Arden notes, providing unsurpassed commentary on the poems.

This digital edition follows Touch Press and Faber’s iPad app The Waste Land that presents T. S. Eliot’s great poem in an innovative and widely praised interactive format.

Click here for the full Press Release

The first ever CD of Shakespeare sonnets, speeches and scenes that I curated for the British Library launched yesterday. Click here for the full press release.

It’s now available to buy, and the Live event will take place on May 4th, 2012, at the British Library.

The Telegraph ran a feature on it with some extracts to listen to, as did the New Statesman, and Mark Lawson interviewed me on BBC Radio 4’s Frontrow last night (available to download as a podcast, dated 14th March 2012).

Enjoy!

Photos of the Contemporary World Premiere of Hamlet in the Original Pronunciation can now be seen here:
www.YearOfThePrince.com

Back from Nevada & playing the lead in the Contemporary World Premiere of Hamlet in Original Pronunciation.

I’m about to finish curating a CD of extracts of Shakespeare in OP for the British Library, the first of its kind, which will be out in February 2012 on CD & download. See here for more details: Shakespeare’s Original Pronunciation

And now, after 7 months of acting, three months of (mostly) writing…

I’m currently adapting Shakespeare’s long poem Venus & Adonis for the Engage Programme out of Bath Theatre Royal, Bath Lit Festival 2012, & Roughhouse Theatre, which will be playing early March 2012.

And I’m about to write a new series of books called Springboard Shakespeare for Arden Shakespeare, coming out September 2012

Probably slightly more regular updates found via my Twitter feed.

Wishing each & all an adventurous new year…

Apologies for the lack of posting to this site in recent months…

Unless you follow me on Twitter you may not know I was playing Demetrius in Iris Theatre’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream this last July, in the gardens of St Paul’s Church in Covent Garden, London.

Nor that I curated a 70 minute CD of well-known – and not so well-known sonnets, speeches and scenes of Shakespeare for the British Library, the first of its kind spoken by professional actors, and out March 2012.

I’m about to adapt Venus and Adonis for Roughhouse Theatre & Bath Theatre Royal… and very excitingly, will be beginning work on a new series of books I’ve been commissioned to write for Arden Shakespeare…

Nor indeed, will you know that I am about to leave for Nevada, USA, to start rehearsals to play Hamlet…

It’s going to be an Original Pronunciation production, the first for 400 years, and will open November 1st.

I’ll be keeping an account and diary of the whole process – the first of which will be up very soon – and found via my Twitter feed…

A very kind blog review:

The final part of Shakespeare on Toast has Crystal putting everything together in a fascinating analysis of one of the key speeches in Macbeth.  It’s a real tour de force…

I think this book is wonderful.  I have learned plenty from it and I suspect anyone other than an English literature academic would do the same…  I reckon it should be compulsory reading for all teenagers studying Shakespeare and so, for that, Saint Jamie of the Bard gets my vote.

 

Read the full review here

While working and speaking at the Hay Festival last week I interviewed Sir Richard Eyre, who ran the Royal National Theatre for ten years, published excerpts of his diaries of his time there in his National Service, and was at the Festival to interview his wife, the producer Sue Birtwistle, on the challenges of adaptation. I grabbed half an hour with him…

There was a look in his eyes that made me speechless. Not a good way to start an interview, I grant you, but goosebumps shivered up my arms, I put down my pen and forgot about the dictaphone in my bag.

He stared into the middle distance, watching the scene play out in his memory. “Heart-breaking…”

Click here to read the rest of the interview…

Passion in Practice is a collaboration between actor Ben Crystal and director Dan Winder exploring fresh approaches to acting Shakespeare.

The starting point for all our work is the words of the writer. Using a solid textual foundation, we play Shakespeare as simply as possible, without any great conceptual frame placed between participants, audience and the play.

By allowing Shakespeare and his words to direct us we discover new ways of approaching Shakespeare for the 21st Century with honesty and great passion.

The next Passion in Practice workshop will be May 16th-20th 2011 in London.

Please head to www.passioninpractice.com for more details.

Being interviewed on t’radio tomorrow about Shakespeare on Toast…

Details to be found here…