Boston trailer for Al-Bassam's "Speaker's Progress"

Swear to Allah, it's not theatre!  ArtsEmerson in Boston has officially announced its 2011-12 season, and Sulayman Al-Bassam's pseudo-post-but-actually-meta-theatrical The Speaker's Progress, a dark and jam-packed take on Twelfth Night,  is on the schedule for October 12-16.  Details and a video clip here.

"Hamlet's Arab Journey" available for pre-order

Woo hoo!  Available for pre-order at Princeton: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9582.html. 

If you happen to be in Boston...

FREE Shakespeare PARADE, PERFORMANCES and SLAM! 

Join us to celebrate the birthday of the Bard this Saturday in Harvard Square!

  

Actors' Shakespeare Project, Harvard Square Business Association &

ORFEO Group are pleased to once again announce 

a birthday extravaganza for Mr. William Shakespeare and the Bookish Ball: 

Saturday, April 30^th

in Harvard Square

from 12:00-4:30 pm.
 

Timeline for the day:

12:00: Parade starts at Hotel Veritas, One Remington Avenue

12:00 - 6:00: Bookish Ball at participating bookstores 

12:30 -3:30 - Activity tables in Harvard Square on Palmer Street

1:00-3:00 - Performances at the Palmer Street Stage

3:00-4:30 - Shakespeare SLAM! at Redline (14 JFK Street) - tickets can be reserved on April 30th at ORFEO Group's activity table

All events are FREE and all ages are welcome!!

Parade and SLAM! will take place come rain or shine.

Monadhil Daood to produce Romeo and Juliet in London 2012

Among the works commissioned for the RSC-produced World Shakespeare Festival, directed by the RSC's Deborah Shaw and coming up next year (April to September) as part of the London 2012 Festival associated with the Olympics:

Romeo and Juliet, directed by Monadhil Daood - Iraqi Theatre Company, Baghdad

Shakespeare’s great love story, set against a backdrop of conflict between families, communities and generations, finds new purchase in the soil of contemporary Iraq, where sectarian strife between Sunni and Shia, ignited and fuelled from outside, has left its population exhausted by a cycle of violence and revenge. Baghdad’s Iraqi Theatre Company will create a Romeo and Juliet for a new generation, infused with Iraq’s rich traditions of poetry, music and ritual.

For Monadhil's previous work, see the Baghdad Iraqi Theatre's web site.  He also played a hammy Polonius in Sulayman Al-Bassam's Al-Hamlet Summit and a terrifying Catesby in Al-Bassam's Richard III.

UPDATE 7/8/11: Full details of the RSC's World Shakespeare Festival to be announced in September, but it seems the RSC is one of the collaborators in the London 2012 festival; it's listed as a partner on this show and others. There's also going to be an RSC production that is explicitly international, provocatively titled, "What Country, Friends, is This?"

Comparing Iraqi politicians to Othello

Writing on the Sotaliraq (Voice of Iraq) web site, op-ed writer Majid `Anqabi compares Iraq's governing elite to Othello (in Arabic). The headline is "Shakespeare's play Othello and the Fear of the Liberation Square Demonstrators."
`Anqabi mentions the theory "held by specialist scholars" that Othello was insecure about Desdemona because he was unable to satisfy her sexually, and thus became vulnerable to jealousy and had to kill her. His analogy is that the ruling Iraqi elite, unable to satisfy its people (e.g., by providing normal state services) is insecure and feels forced to crack down brutally when they demonstrate in Baghdad's Tahrir Square. A new twist to the woman-as-nation analogy.  Also more evidence that most Arab readings of Othello are concerned with the spousal relationship, NOT the West.
Incidentally, the writer also invokes Safa' Khulusi and his nickname for Shakespeare, Shaykh Zubayr.

Clips from Al-Bassam's Twelfth Night adaptation

Sulayman has put up a few clips of Speaker's Progress, with surtitles. Some version of this show is coming to BAM and Boston's ArtsEmerson this fall.
(Sorry I can't quite get the video to be the right width - working on it. Link here.)

Happy Shakespeare Day

يوم شكسبير سعيد - Hope everyone had a fabulous Shakespeare Day!

I saw that the Biblioteca Alexandrina is celebrating with a film festival. Anyone else do anything special? Did you talk like Shakespeare today, for instance?