A Moratorium on Shakespeare?
Well, that's what they're talking about (and talking about and talking about) over at Theatre Is Territory.
The only thing I'd like to add to this is that this was a hot subject almost exactly 10 years ago. When I was running Theatermania.com, I started a story on Macbeth by referring to Matthew Warchus' advocating such a position.
And here is one of the stories that I read about this, back in 1998, in the Times.
Here's another reference to it, and here's another, sort of.
What I've never understood is how far this moratorium would be spread and who would enforce it.
1 comment:
Wow.
That's hilarious and absurd. I'll be the first one in line to gun on Shakespeare, and more importantly the immense social forces that shove bad productions of Shakespeare down everyone's throats as though this long dead guy is the only playwright that ever existed ever, but proposing a moritorium is exactly the kind of impossible-dream-in-order-to-not-have-to-actually-confront-the-problem solution that makes me wanna throw up my hands and walk away.
If we don't like what's going on with Shakespeare, the only sensible action is to ignore Shakespeare and provide the good artists who are getting sucked into the Shakespeare machine with more interesting and yet lucrative alternatives. I know it's hard to compete with an institution that the rich assholes love throwing money at, but if we can't find a way to do it, then we won't find a way to get much of anything done.
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