A Quote by Ian Doescher
My favorite play is Hamlet. It was my first love when it comes to Shakespeare, and I've read it and seen it performed more than just about every other Shakespeare play. I've had the "To be or not to be" monologue memorized since I was 15, and it's just really close to my heart.
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I went to a Jesuit school and they did a William Shakespeare play every year. I got to know Shakespeare as parts I wanted to play. I missed out on playing Ophelia - it was an all-boys school. The younger boys used to play the girls, I played Lady Anne in Richard III and Lady Macbeth, then Richard II and Malvolio. I just became a complete Shakespeare nut, really.
I had great English teachers in high school who first piqued my interest in Shakespeare. Each year, we read a different play - 'Othello,' 'Julius Caesar,' 'Macbeth,' 'Hamlet' - and I was the nerd in class who would memorize soliloquies just for the fun of it.
There's more of yourself in a book than a play. that's why we know all about Dickens and not much about Shakespeare. Ben Jonson murdered people; Marlowe was a spy; Shakespeare just sat in the corner and took notes.
The reason that I'm a writer today is because of Shakespeare and falling in love with Shakespeare when I was 8. That was through the movies, actually - through Olivier's 'Hamlet.' That was the first thing that got me to fall in love with Shakespeare and movies and everything in one big preadolescent rush.
I think American actors are much more intimidated by Shakespeare. I actually want to do this Shakespeare play in New York, but I think it's interesting that there's this gaping hole in the repertoire in the American theater, which is Shakespeare. It's hardly ever done, compared to how often it's done in other companies, not just Britain. Someone from the Roundabout Theater Company - I said, "You never do Shakespeare." And he said, "Yes, we're not very good at it." And I thought, "What a terrible thing to say.".
All the unimaginative assholes in the world who imagine that Shakespeare couldn't have written Shakespeare because it was impossible from what we know about Shakespeare of Stratford that such a man would have had the experience to imagine such things - well, this denies the very thing that separates Shakespeare from almost every other writer in the world: an imagination that is untouchable and nonstop.
When I was doing Shakespeare and I had spent a lot of time and effort in trying to become a great Shakespearean actress. That was how I started my career, was in the theater doing Shakespeare. And my ambition was to be a great classical actress. That was what I wanted more than anything. So, I really pursued that in the first four years of my career. And it was an uphill struggle. It really was. Shakespeare's difficult and Shakespeare in a big theater is even more difficult. So, anyway, it was a struggle for me.
People are going to say, ‘Well, it’s not very truthful.’ But a songwriter doesn’t care about what’s truthful. What he cares about is what should’ve happened, what could’ve happened. That’s its own kind of truth. It’s like people who read Shakespeare plays, but they never see a Shakespeare play. I think they just use his name.
And I just think that to introduce an unknown Shakespeare is thrilling, too - not to do Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet, to do the richer Shakespeare. People will come to this and not know the story.
This is more than just the rebuilding of the Globe, creating some kind of monument to Shakespeare which he doesn't need. His books are his monuments. But this will be a major center for the study of Shakespeare in performance. We are making the only faithful effort to restore the theater in every respect as close to the original as possible.
I think working on Shakespeare was a big part of my time at drama school. I'm so glad that I got to know Shakespeare and got a chance to play great parts in Shakespeare, because it really teaches you - or taught me, anyway - everything.
I look at it like this: that if Shakespeare were alive today, he would have written two or three plays about the Kennedy family, and actors would traditionally play JFK like they Hamlet or King Lear. They just would. I mean, people have played JFK, and they'll play him long after I have.
"With this same key Shakespeare unlocked his heart" once more! Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!
A lot of people have a fear of Shakespeare. Even actors do. People are like, "Oh, I won't go and see Shakespeare because the language is so hard," but it is. When you read it on the page, you go, "What?! What does that mean?!" If you go to a Shakespeare play and you've never been, you sit there and go, "I'm an idiot! I don't get it!"
'Macbeth' sags in act four - the England scene with Malcolm and Macduff just doesn't work theatrically. But with 'Hamlet,' although the play is so long, Shakespeare manages to sustain the arc.
I had been in a Shakespeare company for three years and done a lot of Shakespeare. That was fun. That was interesting. It was a lot of work - anything other than Shakespeare was less work. I had a lot of interesting roles, but I don't point to them and say, "That was more interesting than that," because I don't know what the criteria are.
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