Drew Lichtenberg & Deborah C. Payne — Shakespeare in the Theatre: Shakespeare Theatre Company - with Trey Graham

The artistic vision and business acumen of Michael Kahn, the founding Artistic Director, largely catalyzed this transformation, but so too did the forces of neoliberalism and, more recently, globalization and new media. Accordingly, Shakespeare in the Theatre: Shakespeare Theatre Company not only examines directorial decision-making but also 3 decades of social and economic change in the nation's capital, from the complexities of gentrification to the arts policies of successive administrations.In addition to discussions of directorial practice, this book examines the ambivalence of American theatre artists toward their British cultural inheritance. Analyses of representative productions and interviews with Kahn and his British successor, Simon Godwin, illuminate this complex relationship: one that aspires to a cosmopolitan Anglophilia while positioning classically trained American actors as worthy rivals to their counterparts at the RSC and the National Theatre of Great Britain.PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781350352681?ic_referral=CTwN4cOdfTchQoNBJM0I07poHkh26uZRw7H7uxBQt_EwM06isspnqbxym6LkJ7fYPvcCzdMmRNk5k-8w3FllyjLjqBQ--mWmO7HwzkiE6d9sMX8HqADkuWP3OxCyesokx0bicwDrew Lichtenberg has been resident dramaturg at the Shakespeare Theatre Company, USA, since 2011. He has worked as a dramaturg, literary manager and translator-adaptor with the Royal National Theatre, Public Theater, Roundabout, La Mama, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, McCarter Theatre Center, Yale Rep and Baltimore Center Stage, among others. As an educator, he has taught courses at Catholic University of America, David Geffen School of Drama at Yale University, and Eugene Lang College at the New School. His publications include The Piscatorbühne Century (2021).Deborah C. Payne is Professor Emerita of Literature at American University, USA. She was the Humanities Research Consultant at the Shakespeare Theatre Company from 2000 – 2009, and she has dramaturged for Studio Theatre, Arena Stage, the Kennedy Center, and the Bach Sinfonia. Her publications include Shakespeare in the Theatre: Shakespeare Theatre Company (with Drew Lichtenberg, The Arden Shakespeare, 2024), The Business of English Restoration Theatre, 1660 – 1700 (2024), Revisiting Shakespeare’s Lost Play (2016), Four Restoration Libertine Plays (2005), The Cambridge Companion to English Restoration Theatre (2000) and Cultural Readings of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Theatre (1995).Lichtenberg and Payne are in conversation with Trey Graham. Graham is a D.C.-based journalist who covered theater for the Washington City Paper for two decades. He received the George Jean Nathan Award for distinguished drama criticism in 2004.*recorded 2/22/2025