Thursday, June 5, 2014

William Shakespeare Goes the World on his 450th Birthday



In celebration of his 450th birth celebration, will the 2014 William Shakespeare world tour be a runaway theatrical success?

By: Ringo Bones 

Even to official tenured scholars and devoted fans – no one knows the absolute exact date of William Shakespeare’s birth, but devotees had ever since adopted April 23 as the day to celebrate his birthday. And in 2014, that great bard from Stratford turns 450 and there are plans to celebrate this milestone via a very ambitious world tour that’s as grandiose as the plays created by the great bard himself. 

Shakespeare’s Globe Theater – a re-creation of the theater troupe that hosted most of his plays that dates back during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I – is marking the occasion with an ambitious world tour of Hamlet, the English bard’s most iconic play, which the troupe plans to perform in every country in the world. Given the lofty aims of such a very ambitious Shakespearean world tour, it could well last as long as 2 to 5 years depending on the fans encore. 

Shakespeare Globe Theater’s Artistic Director Dominic Dromgoole tells in a recent press conference that the tour “is a stupid idea.””And the great thing about stupid ideas,” he says, “is that people understand them very swiftly.””So when we go out to people around the world and say, very simply”: “We are taking Hamlet to every country in the world they immediately get the fun of it and the ambition of it.” Given the average times a very experienced theatrical troupe like Shakespeare’s Globe Theater can perform Hamlet in a week, it would probably take them 5 years to perform the play on every country on the planet if you add the travel time. 
 

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