Oberon Shakespeare Study Group

Rosey Hunter, Pam Varilone and Sharon Hunter at Oberon holiday gathering 2014 by Linda Theil Rosey Hunter welcomed the Oberon group to her home on Saturday December 6, 2014 for a holiday feast of companionship and good will. Oberon co-founder Barbara Burris joined us in our first gathering since the recent loss of her husband, Oberon friend and colleague Ron Halstead. George and Sharon Hunter, Pam Varilone, Richard Joyrich, Rey Perez, Mara Radzvickas, Linda Theil, Rob Stefanovich, and Robin Browne also attended. Rey Perez took the photos shown here. We all extend holiday greetings and wish joy to Oberon friends and family, far and near. Barbara Burris at Oberon holiday gathering, 2014 Pam Varilone, Robin Browne, George Hunter and Mara Radzvickas at Oberon holiday gathering 2014 Richard Joyrich and Linda Theil at Oberon holiday gathering 2014 Mara Radzvickas at Oberon holiday gathering 2014 Oberon photographer Rey Perez and Barbara Burris at Oberon holiday...

Ron Halstead at Festival Theatre in Stratford, Ontario October 4, 2014 by Linda Theil At Ron Halstead's (1940-2014) memorial service on November 22, 2014, O beron member Robin Browne spoke of our beloved friend at William Sullivan & Son Funeral Home, Royal Oak, Michigan where mourners gathered to honor Ron, and comfort his wife of 47 years, Oberon co-founder Barbara Ann Burris. Oberons also attending included George and Sharon Hunter, Rosie Hunter, Richard Joyrich, Rey Perez, Linda Theil, Pam Verlone, and Mara  Radzvickas. Robin Browne said: An article in  The Eccentric  pinpoints the date I first met Barbara Burris and Ron Halstead: Wednesday 18 October 2000. We met at the Baldwin Library in Birmingham, Michigan, following a wonderful lecture given by a researcher from Northern England, Derran Charlton.  I quote from the newspaper which I have kept these past fourteen years: ‘The retired coalminer, Mr. Charlton, was sipping tea at the Roya...

Posted by Richard Joyrich I am quite saddened to have to report the sudden passing of our dear friend Ronald Halstead last Friday (November 7, 2014). Ron has been a long-standing member of the Oberon group and will be sorely missed.  There will be a memorial service for Ron at William Sullivan and Son Funeral Home at 705 W 11 Mile Road in Royal Oak (east of Woodward and west of Main St) at 3-5 PM. Here is a link to the obituary and other information on the funeral home website:  http://www.sullivanfuneraldirectors.com/obituary/Ronald-Douglas-Halstead/Royal-Oak-MI/1449423 We, at Oberon, will be preparing a special memorial page on this blog in the near future with more details about Ron's many contributions to Oberon and to the wider Shakespeare Authorship community. We will welcome any personal comments or remembrances of Ron at that time. In the meantime, please join me in wishing the best to Ron's wife Barbara Burris and Ron's entire family an...

by Linda Theil David Montee, author of Translating Shakespeare David Montee , PhD has distilled 30 years of teaching "Acting Shakespeare" at Interlochen Center for the Arts into Translating Shakespeare: a Guide for Young Actors published in August 2014 by theater book publishers Smith & Kraus. Interlochen is the venerable and prestigious arts center near Traverse City, Michigan that is noted for its full-time education of talented youth. Last month, Montee gave a reading and presentation of his new book on the Interlochen campus, and he will make a presentation from 3-5 p.m. on November 22 at Horizon Books, 243 E. Front Street in Traverse City. Oberons may remember Montee as Shylock in an   Interlochen production of  Merchant of Venice  reviewed by our late chairperson, Tom Hunter in July, 2011. Hunter said: His performance not only avoided the clown Jew stereotype, but was done with an ideal mix of understatement and intensity which accurately showed S...

SOF webmaster and media consultant Jennifer Newton sent information about an online class lead by Michael Delahoyde to those who follow her The Shakespeare Underground website. Oberon chair Richard Joyrich said, "T his 3-part online lecture series will be very good. For those who haven't yet seen him, Professor Delahoyde is an extremely entertaining and knowledgeable speaker.  I have already registered for this course. It is completely free. All you have to do is provide your email address so you can get the details on how to access the webcasts." Newton said: I want to let you know of an upcoming event, School of Night -- an interactive, online Shakespeare authorship course featuring Professor Michael Delahoyde, hosted by The Shakespeare Underground . This three-part series will take place Thursday evenings in November: 11/6, 11/13, and 11/20.  The Shakespeare Hoax November 6 9:00pm EST  /  6:00 pm PST “This well-painted piece”: Renaissance...

by Linda Theil Matt Wyneken enjoyed breakfast at Features restaurant on Ontario St. in downtown Stratford before 10:30 a.m. "Authorship Appeal" moot court. A contingent of Oberons hit the road again this weekend to attend the "Authorship Appeal" moot court sponsored by the Stratford Festival in Ontario as part of its annual Forum series. Ron Halstead stands outside the Festival Theater in Stratford, Ontario before attending the October 4, 2014 "Authorship Appeal" moot court. Matt Wyneken, Ron Halstead and I attended the event held in the Festival Theatre on October 4 where we watched litigator Guy Pratte contend against the Stratfordian attribution of the Shakespeare canon before the Right Honorable Madam Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin of the Supreme Court of Canada. We met-up with old friends Lynne and Michael Kositsky.  Lynne Kositsky shared the news that she has two new young adult books out: With Fearful Bravery and The Plagues of...

by Richard Joyrich As a member of the Folio Society (an organization that prints and sells very beautiful, although expensive, editions of classic works of literature, history, fiction, science, and just about everything else) I get a free subscription to their semiannual magazine, which is simply called folio . This magazine contains very short articles about literary matters of all kinds. I just received the September 2014 edition and it has a short article by Professor Stanley Wells, titled “Shakespeare: A Lover of Books”. In this article Professor Wells discusses briefly how Shakespeare (by whom he of course means William Shakspere of Stratford) loved and read many books and used them as inspiration for his plays. Wells mentions many books that Shakespeare must have read and says that many of them were published before Shakespeare began writing his plays. These include Arthur Brooke’s Romeus and Juliet (1562), Arthur Golding’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1...

by Linda Theil Richard Joyrich at American Players Theatre, Spring Green, WI, Sept. 13, 2014 Richard Joyrich, Ron Halstead, and I attended the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship conference in Madison, Wisconsin September 11-14. Richard is secretary to the SOF board and served on the conference committee; Ron presented on the topic of "What's Hecuba to Him? Connecting Life and Drama in Hamlet "; and I gave a speech on mobile-media basics. Oberon member Ron Halstead presented Sept. 14, 2014 at SOF conference in Madison, WI. It was a lot of fun! And I'm hoping Joyrich will post his notes on the entire event. Chef Jeremy Lynch of Enos Farms, Spring Green WI On Saturday night we all went to the American Players' Theatre in Spring Green where we had a great picnic prepared by chef Jeremy Lynch of Enos Farms . We had tickets to the APT production of Much Ado, with David Daniel -- who entertained us with theatrical insight during dinner -- as Bened...

Hanno Wember, board member of The New Shakespeare Society in Hamburg, Germany at the 2014 SOF conference in Madison, WI by Linda Theil Once again our Hamburg correspondent, Hanno Wember of  Neue Shake-speareGesellschaft   (New Shakespeare Society) brings word of post-Stratfordian thought in northern Europe with his report on a new book by Swedish author Martin Tegen published by Themis of Stockholm . The book is titled  Vem var Shakespeare? Sonetternas gåta , which translates: Who Was Shakespeare? The Riddle (or enigma) of the Sonnets . Wember says that part of Tegen's thesis is that the author of Shakespeare's works was a musician and he links de Vere to the works through de Vere's own musicianship. Wember provides the following information translated from the publisher's website:  Who is hiding behind the name of the author Shakespeare? The first time the name of the author William Shakespeare emerges is the verse epic story of Venus and ...

Alexander Waugh, presented two papers at the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship 2014 conference in Madison, WI; Photo Linda Theil by Linda Theil Ron Halsted, Richard Joyrich and I attended the 2014 Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship conference in Madison, WI Sept 11-14. Alexander Waugh flew in from England to present two papers: one on the bogus nature of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust site, and the second on Ben Jonson's "Sweet Swan of Avon" reference in the First Folio that appears to place the author of Shakespeare's works on the banks of Stratford on Avon. Waugh's essay on the topic of Shakespeare's birthplace appears in his just-published Kindle Single ebook titled, Shakespeare in Court, and is available from Amazon for $1.99 at http://amazon.com/Shakespeare-Court-Kindle-Single-Alexander-ebook/dp/B00NFFP3OU . A Kindle reader is available at no cost from the site. Preview available here . Waugh's essay on Jonson's "swan of avon" is ...