Chicago Shakespeare Theater: Learning by Doing
Edward Hall is the artistic director of Chicago Shakespeare Theater, and this fall he's directing two Shakespeare plays at the same time with the same company of actors. He has no directing degree. He learned the job by doing it. Edward tells the story of how he got here: acting at university in Leeds, drama school in North London, and borrowing about fifteen hundred pounds to take a new play to Edinburgh. His big break came at a small theater outside London, where he was handed Othello, and that led to Propeller, the company he ran for twenty years. Along the way we get a Henry V that took the audience outside to invade France, complete with a real horse. He also talks about directing radio, television, and video games, why Shakespeare should be treated as a modern writer and not a museum piece, what it's like to put "the punk next to the pinstripe" on Chicago's stages, and what he hopes audiences take home from A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Winter's Tale. Bringing Up the Lights is an original series from Sound Concept Media, written and narrated by Keith Conrad.
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