Did Shakespeare “Invent” What it Means to be Human?
On Saturday, February 26th, we here at Shakespeare Dallas hostedour first event of the year at the
The small, intimate stage of theBath House proved the perfect location for this part lecture, part acting, partconversation performance. With the help of his actors – Catherine D. Dubord,Anthony L. Ramirez, and Joanna Schellenberg (pictured, in her performance oflast year’s Cymbeline) –Davies dissects the original book’s thesis that Shakespeare’s unmistakablyhuman characters are so influential to how we see the world today he literally“invented” the modern human. To Davies, Bloom’s theory doesn’t seem completelyaccurate, but there is a certain merit to looking at how Shakespeare hasinfluenced the human condition with his fantastic characters, from namelessporters to queens of
Using a mixture of performance and instruction, Davies shows how Shakespeare’s characters grow, change, learn, make mistakes and affect th epeople around them all in the context of a single scene (or, in the case of Hamlet, one lengthy soliloquy). Unlike Shakespeare’s predecessors, the characters choose their own paths; no deity or higher power drops from the ceiling to steer them. Whether they rise or fall, they do so on their own terms. And as Shakespeare explores the humanity of his creations, the viewer becomes more aware of themselves.
Shakespeare Dallas has produced Davies’ vision for several years now, but never has it been more relevant to our season as a whole. Two of the four characters praised as the “most human,” Rosalind and Hamlet, will both be featured in this year’s Shakespeare in the Park performances. And without giving too much away for the spoiler-phobic among us, their distinctive journeys have a lot to say about what it means to live both in the time of Shakespeare and today.
