Shakespeare's Soul
Shakespeare's Soul turns the focus away from his literary output, instead choosing to explore the contribution he made to our understanding of what it is to be a Human Being, and how this too can be turned into a "living legacy".
In trying to understand, and then perpetuate, how Shakespeare did what he did as Playwright and a Poet, tremendous insights have been gained into how he also furthered humanity's knowledge of itself. We have only recently begun to realise that this knowledge also needs special focus and attention, and so we are very much at the start of this work.
Here we show how this thing we all call Shakespeare is a living phenomenon, by imagining him to be a living presence.
This revolves around three pieces of work:
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Time After Time - the play written and performed in 2003
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Shakespeare's Dream - the book published in 2019
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I, Shakespeare - a book currently being written
"Shakespeare is Dead, AlternativeShakespeare is Alive
- Stepping Back, Moving On"
The first part of the book looks at the current status of the world of Shakespeare and argues that blindly holding on to a dead writer's works is an unhealthy state of affairs and one that ultimately does a disservice to the man and his works.
The second one looks at the need to recognise an AlternativeShakespeare, one that carries on the work of Shakespeare by creating new work out of his legacy. The last part explores in more detail how the process of moving on from Shakespeare into AlternativeShakespeare can come about and the challenges it faces.
Over the next few months, we hope to put together our thoughts and produce a discussion document - watch this space!