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.
