Just wrapped up shooting Othello at Shakespeare & Company and I have to say, this is Shakespeare done right. Everything was so clear – I was never lost. Watching Michael Hammond as Iago slowly and cunningly playing John Thompson as Othello into his trap was stunning, subtle and true. No frills, no distractions. Just language, action, meaning in words. Terrific. Tony Simotes as director is kicking it in.

Go. Get your tickets here. Do not make excuses.

Kevin Sprague

Elizabeth Raetz as Olivia, and Ryan Winkles as Sir Andrew Aguecheek in “Twelfth Night.”

Great review of Twefth Night in the New York Times with some nice photos running. I haven’t seen the print version of this but I hear it looks good. Elizabeth Aspenlieder knocked it out of the ballpark this August with big, colorful stories in NYT and Wall Street Journal and Boston Globe, in some cases multiple times. I always tell people that marketing lets the audience know that they can buy tickets, but PR actually sells out houses. This production is also testament to having faith in your home-grown talent, as Jonathan Croy certainly is, having mounted more productions of Shakespeare through the Fall Festival than any other person alive except Kevin Coleman. Govane Lohbauer’s fabulous costumes, done on a shoestring, should shame any better budgeted production into obscurity. These talented folks live here, work here, and teach here. We should honor them.

Posted via web from Kevin Sprague

via online.wsj.com

Terry Teachout has a great review for “Twlfth Night” at Shakespeare & Co and for “A Streetcar Named Desire” at Barrington Stage Co. He says this about “Twelfth Night”:
“I don’t know when I’ve seen anything funnier than his staging of the swordfight between Viola (Merritt Janson) and the fatuous Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Ryan Winkles), a piece of slapstick so precisely calculated and perfectly realized that it comes close to stopping the show. Almost as ludicrous is the near-demented lust with which the exquisite Countess Olivia (Elizabeth Raetz) chases the hapless Viola (who is disguised as a boy) all over the stage, eventually nailing her with an eye-popping kiss that clearly causes its recipient to reconsider the strength of her commitment to heterosexuality.”
I agree with him. Go get your tickets now. Summer is coming to an end and NOW is the time to get there!

Posted via web from Kevin Sprague

via nytimes.com

Here’s a link to the NY Times story that ran on Sunday across the spread with a couple of great big photos. I’m a huge admirer of Tina and all her vision and work and I hold out the best for Shakespeare & Company as they traverse the rocky terrain ahead under the guiding hand of the very excellent Tony Simotes. I’ve made my career with the Company in many ways and I know that my 15 years making them look good has been beneficial to filling a lot of seats. Westward Ho!

Posted via web from Kevin’s posterous

This is the video I shot of “Dracula”, Darrell Pucciarellos’ Ballet Metropolis Production
at the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield, MA on November 1st. My Nephew, Ruslan, danced the lead role and the whole cast did a marvelous job. The experiment here has to do with the creation and distribution of High-Definition (HD) video online. HD is a slightly moribund format outside of broadcast because there is no well-developed distribution mechanism (DVD’s are standard-definition). I’ve been playing with how best to bring access to this kind of media and in this case the original HD video (shot at 1080i) has been scaled down slightly to 720P and encoded as flash-video. I think the result is quite vivid. Watch it full screen!

Here’s the result of my Alphonse Mucha inspiration project. This image will be used for the inaugural season of the new Tennessee Shakespeare Company. I like the way it came out, and although inspired by the Mucha artwork, it is still my own, and represents how I see the world. Thanks to Brittany Morgan for her willing and able participation!

I called it. Othello at Shakespeare & Company is the hit of the summer in the Berkshires. Read this great review about all the current productions at Shakespeare & Co. in the Wall St. Journal by Terry Teachout. Good news for the company, and good news from the Berkshires. Also, here’s the great New York Times review! If past experience is any indicator, a solid national class review like this is pure box office gold. Combined with the “new theatre in the Berkshires” summary last week in the New York Times, it looks like a slow start will end up being a raucous follow through to the season. Kudos to the many, many people involved who are doing the work (all Berkshire Creative Economy jobs, mind you!) with special kudos the the hardest working gal in showbiz, Elizabeth Aspenlieder, who not only puts in major roles in two productions simultaneously this summer but also manages to deliver a PR push with her associate Jeremy Goodwin that is nothing short of world-class in its effect.

Oh, and not to toot my own horn, but those great big photos on the page don’t look so bad either, if I say so myself. Good pictures sell tickets. Great pictures sell a LOT of tickets.

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Just wrapped up shooting Othello at Shakespeare & Company and I have to say, this is Shakespeare done right. Everything was so clear – I was never lost. Watching Michael Hammond as Iago slowly and cunningly playing John Thompson as Othello into his trap was stunning, subtle and true. No frills, no distractions. Just language, action, meaning in words. Terrific. Tony Simotes as director is kicking it in.

Go. Get your tickets here. Do not make excuses. For more images go to the gallery.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

I’ve been at work with Berkshire Creative for about 18 months now as part of the steering group and various committees. (That’s an illustration of the “Creative Cluster” we did up top.) It’s been a fun process and great for the Berkshires and I’ve enjoyed it a lot. We’ve relaunched the website as a wordpress blog to open up the conversation and get more people involved and I like the way it is going. I made a post there which has got me thinking about the changing landscape of culture, institutions and investment. Here’s the excerpt:

“One argument that we hear is that “there are too many non-profits in the Berkshires, all going to the same funding sources”. I think that is short-sighted. Many of the institutions in our area realize the substantial bulk of their funding from outside sources, include donors from outside of the region, and national-level granting organizations. These funds come into our economy and stay here, paid out in salaries, construction, resources and other ways. I’d like to predict the day that other communities come “shopping” in the Berkshires, seeking to lure our cultural treasures away with promises of new investment, much as happened in professional sports, with cities competing for valuable franchises. We may not be there yet, but it’s interesting to consider.”

What do you think? What if, say, Providence RI came knocking on Shakespeare & Company’s door with an offer they couldn’t refuse? What if the Hamptons became a second home for Jacob’s Pillow II? What is the role of place in creativity and expression? What if an organization decided to “branch out” and create a second or third site? Is the experience transportable? I think of the phenomenal, for-profit explosive growth in something like “Cirque du Soleil” and it makes me wonder. Understand, I’m not advocating either way. The concept just popped into my mind this morning. But it does make you think. Also, I think it might help as an exercise to imagine such scenarios when assessing the relative value and economic impact of the cultural assets of our region.

Thoughts? Post a comment.