How Shakespeare Continues to Matter

Two months ago, we had to transform our *Romeo and Juliet* into a streaming video experience. If we'd been able to welcome you to Turbine Flats and its wonderful community space, we'd have presented you with programs including notes from Executive Artistic Director Summer Lukasiewicz and Education Director Stephen Buhler. Here's what they had to say -- 

In this timeless piece of theatre lives a memorable story that has been retold and reimagined countless times over the past four hundred years: a long-held and unexplained feud; a pair of love-struck teens; a tragic ending.

Tucked in the corners, between the big brawls and the love sonnets, are two key lessons that might be missed if we focus exclusively on feuding families and star-crossed lovers:

The first from the Healer, Friar Lawrence, a man of God and an herbalist, giving a warning on the dual nature of humankind and the disaster that awaits those who allow the darkness to overpower the light:

Two such opposed kings encamp them still / In man as well as herbs – grace and rude will; / And where the worser is predominant, / Full soon the canker death eats up that plant. (Act 2, scene 3)

The second from Romeo in conversation with the Dealer, an apothecary he seeks out for a poison to end his life, giving a warning on the evil nature of greed:

There is thy gold, worse poison to men’s souls, / Doing more murder in this loathsome world / Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell. / I sell thee poison; thou hast sold me none. (Act 5, scene 1)

The morals woven into the tragic tale continue to foreshadow our own stories. Are we allowing the worser parts of our nature to be predominant? Are we tolerating the murderous destruction that follows from greed?

Here is our retelling for 2020:

A play written in the 1590s.

Music written in 2019.

An English playwright.

An American folk artist.

Twenty-three characters.
And eight actors.

These actors, coming together as an ensemble and blended with Andrea von Kampen’s beautiful music, have opened their hearts to each other in order to breathe fresh life into a centuries-old text.

Tonight, we offer it to you and ask you to open your hearts to hear this play with new ears.

-- Summer Lukasiewicz

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln has cancelled classes for this week; after spring break all instruction will be remote for the rest of the semester and possibly beyond. I had already suspended classroom meetings for my courses but am grateful that students and my colleagues (and I) will have some additional time to adjust to this new reality. Countless schools -- from K-12 through colleges and universities -- across the country have ceased face-to-face meetings. Countless arts productions and presentations have been cancelled. 

In the face of current developments, my brilliant and big-hearted friend Dr. Wendy Beth Hyman, a Renaissance scholar who teaches at Oberlin College, shared these wise words with her students:

"We don't get to choose when we were born. We don't choose what natural disasters, epidemiological emergencies, stock market crashes, tyrannical regimes, or wars our generations face. We only get to choose how we react. We can use it as a way to pour our energy back into the world. If you care about history, keep a journal. Future historians will want to know about what it was like to live through this time. If you are a political activist, document the lies. Journalists will need our informed attention. If you love literature, write. If you are an artist, make art. Make art filled with whatever you have, even if that art comes from anguish. This guy -- Shakespeare -- wrote through the plague. What will you write?"

Our last shared viewing experience in my Shakespeare on Screen course this semester turned out to be the scenes leading into Intermission from Franco Zeffirelli's lovely 1968 film of Romeo and Juliet. The poignance of the marriage (especially knowing how a plague will affect the lovers and the Friar) and of our own historical moment was deeply felt by all.

Let us all accept Professor Hyman's challenge and, also, let us all take very good care of each other -- and of ourselves -- in these extraordinary times and after.

-- Stephen Buhler