Time: 2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Location: Lazaridis Hall, Tom Patterson Theatre

Cost: $35

Carefully consider and engage with the 2023 season’s playbill through university-style lectures on the topics and themes explored in the productions.

Directors All Do It: Cutting Shakespeare, July 9 (Season Deep Dive Week)

Four hundred years after the First Folio was printed, new productions of Shakespeare’s plays come to life around the world, each with unique textual variations. Everything old is new again when a director tackles one of Shakespeare’s works with a pair of scissors in hand. Love’s Labour’s Lost director Peter Pasyk and legendary stage manager Nora Polley take a look at how and why we cut and edit the Bard’s work, and the impact it has on stage.

Shakespeare Dramaturgy, July 23 (CBC Ideas Week)

A great deal of analysis goes into a play before the acting begins. In this exclusive seminar, Professor Alexa Alice Joubin from George Washington University and Professor Jyotsna Singh from Michigan State University will explore dramatic theory to dramaturgy and how the vital aspects of Shakespeare’s texts are brought to life through a play’s production. In short, learn when the analysis ends and the acting begins.

The Process of a Playwright, August 27 (Readers and Writers Week)

From an idea at the back of your mind to a production on a Stratford stage. Led by Director of the Foerster Bernstein New Play Development Program, Keith Barker, follow the playwright’s process from an initial idea, through writing and editing, then bringing it to the stage. Understand how critical elements are added and changed as a story moves toward an audience in a process that is deeply personal to each playwright.

Shakespeare’s First Folio, September 17 (Scholars and Experts Week)

Playing Shakespeare’s First Folio: A practical guide for the actor from original practice to living thought. Building on the work of theatre scholar Neil Freeman and theatre director Patrick Tucker, this session, led by artist and scholar Dean Gabourie, will investigate Shakespeare’s First Folio to examine the clues it offers as to how to play the text.