Oberon Shakespeare Study Group

Dear Oberon, Robert Duha, managing director of the Michigan Shakespeare Festival, was our special guest for the second meeting in a row Thursday, Feb. 19, to follow up with us on certain issues pertaining to the Festival.   Mr. Duha  brought with him Laura, his marketing assistant. Robert has given Oberon the use of a table at all Festival productions this year for getting out information about the authorship issue especially as it may relate to the productions at this year’s Festival.   Robert also stated that the Festival newsletter    needs articles and invites Oberon members to submit articles on authorship issues or on anything else of interest about Shakespeare or especially  The Tempest  or  As You Like It , the two Shakespeare plays being performed by the Festival this year. He added that there will be a final print edition of the newsletter this year, after which it will continue life via e-mail.   He also asked Ob...

Robert Duha, the Michigan Shakespeare Festival  ’s new managing director, was Oberon’s special guest at our January 22 meeting.    It didn’t take long for Rob to make it clear that he wants Michigan’s festival to take its rightful place among the national festivals centering on Shakespeare’s work.    “I want to start a war with Stratford,” he declared.    Oberon can only hope that we can be there to pass along some friendly ammunition. Rob became the MSF’s leader only last summer, but he has already formulated specific plans for the Festival.    Near term, he plans to catch up with opportunities which need following up, such as building contact and support groups around the state. His long range plans involve bringing Shakespeare back outdoors again.   The Festival originally appeared in an outdoors venue, then moved into the theater at Jackson Community College.    Rob would like to see the Festival performed once again out...

Dear Oberon, Just a reminder that we will take up where we left off at our February meeting this Thursday at the Farmington Library on 12 Mile Rd. between Orchard Lake Rd. and Farmington Rd.  Doors to our meeting room A open at 6:45. Our special guest will again be Robert Duha, managing director of the Michigan Shakespeare Festival.  We will also welcome festival artistic director John Neville-Andrews, who will be directing  The Tempest  for the festival this summer. At our last meeting, Robert revealed some fascinating plans and dreams for the MSF, which could well involve our Oberon group.  More on that in a separate e-mail report and at our meeting Thursday. Also, be on hand to plan our Shakespeare Unbirthday Party for our April meeting, one of the best unbirthdays you will ever celebrate.  The idea, of course, is that the world has been commemorating the wrong date for Shakespeare’s birth for 400 years now.  Why have the...

wish chuck happy birthday    I'm a staunch evolutionist, but I can't say I like this million monkeys support of Darwin's genius: 15 Answers to Creationist nonsense -- Sci Am Darwin's b'day Feb. 12, 2009   8. Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, let alone a living cell or a human, could spring up by chance. Chance plays a part in evolution (for example, in the random mutations that can give rise to new traits), but evolution does not depend on chance to create organisms, proteins or other entities. Quite the opposite: natural selection, the principal known mechanism of evolution, harnesses nonrandom change by preserving "desirable" (adaptive) features and eliminating "undesirable" (nonadaptive) ones. As long as the forces of selection stay constant, natural selection can push evolution in one direction and produce sophisticated structures in surprisingly short times.  As an analogy, consider the 13-letter seq...

I was looking at Mark Anderson's Shakespearebyanothername blog archive today and came across links to his August 2006 essays on Gather.com. The essays are a persuasive intro to the authorship question. Part I: The enigma and the Shakespeare code Part II: Gentle Master William Part III: The 1604 question Anderson's March 4, 2006 entry in his archive includes an extensive -- and brilliant -- commentary by our chairperson, Tom Hunter. Anderson's current blog is at Shakespearebyanothername

  Quote from masthead of Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project This treasure trove of a site offers much to Shakespeare omnivores, not least of which is the Spotlight feature on Aboriginal adaptations of Shakespeare  . Here's a snippet from the main page introduction of the site: T h e  Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project   is the online resource for anyone interested in how Shakespeare's plays have been transformed and adapted in Canada. But it also contains a wealth of material that relates to all things Shakespearean. With the launch of CASP Version 2, we are pleased to expand the already ample offerings on the site. These include a significant increase in multimedia files; multiple new pages on new areas of research with an emerging focus on French Canada; a huge amount of special resources, including documents, books, scholarly articles, reviews, images, and the like; a literacy video game and perhaps the most comprehensive and intensely multi-me...

Four centuries later and the Shakespeare meme continues to reproduce. Here's a Twenty-first Century take on King Lear by humorist Christopher Moore  , Fool: a Novel , to be published February 10 by William Morrow/Harper Collins  . Publishers Weekly says: Starred Review. Here's the Cliff Notes you wished you'd had for King Lear—the mad royal, his devious daughters, rhyming ghosts and a castle full of hot intrigue—in a cheeky and ribald romp that both channels and chides the Bard and all Fate's bastards. Check it out for yourself in this excerpt  . Addendum: UT/Dallas Interview w/Christopher Moore