Summer
2003
Will Power
page
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"There
were a few technical things I would have done differently,"
says director Blake Middleton after the show. "But I think
it's a damn good play, and no one ever does it. It's kind of an
underdog."
So
it goes in Westwood-upon-Avon, where nearly 390 years after his
death The Bard is indeed alive and well.
Whether
it's on small stages around campus with the 10-year-old Shakespeare
Reading and Performing Group — an ever-changing collection
of students, staff and alumni from diverse, mostly non-theater backgrounds
(Middleton is a biomedical researcher), who share a passion for
the works of William Shakespeare — or in classrooms with leading
Shakespeare scholars or in performance spaces in the theater department
or in symposia, tours or lectures, UCLA these days is rich in Elizabethan
spirit.
Why
is it still so important to focus the spotlight on a 439-year-old
English poet and playwright? What is it about Shakespeare that drives
such continuing ardor?
The
answer depends to some extent on whom you ask. In Shakespeare's
plays, Visiting Professor of Theater Milan Dragicevich '79 finds
"fantastic feasts of language" that, when combined with
his simple, powerful stories, "have never been re-created."
For Professor of English Stephen Dickey, it is because "Shakespeare
is the central figure in Western aesthetic culture
the coin
of the realm. Even people who don't know Shakespeare know
Shakespeare."
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