The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 30.032 Thursday, 24 January 2019
From: John F. Andrews <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: January 24, 2019 at 11:32:58 AM EST
Subject: A New Season of Shakespeare Guild Programming
An Evening with Dakin Matthews
Monday, January 28, at 8 p.m.
The National Arts Club
15 Gramercy Park South, Manhattan
Free, but Reservations Requested
As we open our 2019 programming for a Speaking of Shakespeare series that is now in its third decade, we’re delighted to announce a special evening with Dakin Matthews, a versatile actor, director, producer, playwright, and drama scholar who’s earning plaudits as Judge Taylor in a critically-acclaimed Broadway staging of To Kill a Mockingbird.
In 2015 Dakin played Churchill, opposite Helen Mirren's Queen Elizabeth, in the Broadway transfer of The Audience. He has also won praise in such popular shows as Waitress and The Best Man. In 2003 his script for a Lincoln Center presentation of Henry IV, starring one of his former Juilliard students, Kevin Kline, as Falstaff, garnered a Drama Desk award. And in 2011 he delighted playgoers at Shakespeare in the Park as Lafew in All's Well that Ends Well. His dozens of screen credits include memorable roles in Spielberg's Lincoln, in the Coen brothers’ True Grit, and in such popular TV series as Dallas, Desperate Housewives, House, LA Law, Murder She Wrote, NYPD Blue, The West Wing, and Two and a Half Men.
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An Afternoon Salon with Alice Quinn
Tuesday, January 29, at 2 p.m.
The National Arts Club
15 Gramercy Park South, Manhattan
Free, but Reservations Requested
To inaugurate a new daytime series at the NAC, we hope you'll join us for a warm salute to Alice Quinn, who'll soon retire as Executive Director of the Poetry Society of America, a position she's held for more than a decade. Alice served as Poetry Editor for the New Yorker from 1987 to 2007, and prior to that she played a significant role as Poetry Editor for Alfred A. Knopf Publishers. In 2006 she published Edgar Allan Poe & The Juke-Box; Uncollected Poems, Drafts, and Fragments by Elizabeth Bishop, and she is now editing Bishop's journals and notebooks.
In addition to her editorial contributions and her many articles about and interviews with influential writers, Alice is also the arts advocate to whom we're indebted for the poetry that New York commuters enjoy as they ride the Subway.
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A Frog & Peach Twelfth Night
Tuesday, January 29, at 7 p.m.
The Players
16 Gramercy Park South, Manhattan
Free, but Reservations Requested
There are so many opportunities to enjoy great theatre in the New York area that some of the city's most imaginative productions get little or no attention. It's thus a pleasure to place a spotlight on Frog & Peach, a troupe that was founded by distinguished members of The Actors Studio to explore new approaches to Shakespeare's classics. Between February 22 and March 17 this innovative company will present Twelfth Night at the Sheen Center (18 Bleecker Street). And in what promises to be an unusually lively gathering, director Lynnea Benson and members of her cast (among them Richard James Porter, who'll be portraying Malvolio) will offer music, brief vignettes, and lively dialogue about an ensemble that has featured such luminaries as Karen Lynn Gorney, Earl Hyman, and Austin Pendleton.
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Visit www.shakesguild.org for highlights about these and other Shakespeare Guild offerings, among them an October UK Theatre Awards ceremony in London's historic Guildhall, where Sir Ian McKellen presented our 2018 Gielgud trophy to Sir Richard Eyre. Upcoming events will include evening programs with directors Nagle Jackson (Tuesday, February 26, at the NAC) and Ethan McSweeny (Thursday, March 14, at the NAC ), and a special Ides of March tour of Edwin Booth's final home (to be conducted by curator Raymond Wemmlinger on Friday, March 15, at The Players).