The people at the State Library Archives and Museum were stunned to hear, in February 2015, that they were chosen as Alaska’s location to host Shakespeare First Folio. As part of the celebration on the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death, the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. paired up with the Cincinnati Museum Center and the American Library Association to bring “The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare” to all 50 states in 2016.
The First Folio is a work of historic importance. Assembled by actors John Hemminge and Henry Condell and published in 1623, it contains the only existing copies of 18 Shakespeare plays, including “Macbeth” and “The Tempest,” which would have been lost without it. Sites chosen for their state’s exhibit include the Seattle Public Library, the University of Notre Dame and the New-York Historical Society.
When Juneau was chosen a year and a half ago, the site that would host it was an empty shell, the SLAM building still more than a year from completion.
“They really had good faith in our ability to host this exhibit,” said Claire Imamura, outreach librarian at the Alaska State Library. “It was definitely a surprise but we’re so happy, just thrilled.”
In Juneau, a cascade of events has been planned for duration of the Folio’s visit, July 26-Aug. 24. Local Shakespeare scholars Jim Hale and Nina Chordas will give lectures, along with archeologist Rick Knecht and international theatre director Graham Watts. The Juneau Public Libraries and the Friends of the State Library, Archives, and Museum will put on youth activities such as a Shakespeare game day and a costume workshop. And, perhaps most ambitious of all, Theatre in the Rough will hold readings of all 36 plays in the folio.
“That’s one a day, five days a week (and) four on Saturday (from) 10 in the morning until 10 at night,” said Aaron Elmore, co-founder and co-artistic director of Theatre in the Rough and exhibit specialist at the Alaska State Museum.
How are they going to pull it off?
“A huge bunch of volunteers are coming out of the woodwork,” Elmore said. “They’re multiplying.”
To go
The book itself is part of the world’s largest collection of First Folios — the 82 at the Folger Shakespeare Library. It will go on display on Tuesday, July 26, in the SLAM’s lecture hall along with interpretive panels and images that travel with the exhibit. The lecture hall, opposite the atrium from the State Museum, will be open from 1-5 p.m., Monday-Saturday, throughout the exhibit and entry is free. A display of costumes, swords and props from Theatre in the Rough’s 25 years of Shakespeare performances can be seen on the mezzanine.
The book will be open to Hamlet’s famous speech, a relief to Elmore and Katie Jensen, co-founder and co-artistic director of Theatre in the Rough and records analyst at the Alaska State Archives, who saw a First Folio years ago when “it was open to a not famous page in the middle of ‘Troilus and Cressida’ or something,” Elmore said.
Or was it “‘King John’ or something,” as Jensen remembers.
“This is actually ‘to be or not to be’ right there on the page. You’ll be able to read Hamlet’s famous speech of existential angst,” Elmore said.
For those who want to read on, perhaps to the balcony scene in “Romeo & Juliet,” Theatre in the Rough will be providing a facsimile copy of the First Folio as well as a reset version annotated by Shakespeare scholar Neil Freeman for visitors to page through.
In addition to Shakespeare’s 400-year-old language, the First Folio features wacky spellings that change depending on the person setting the type, and type that gets muddied and hard to read at points.
For instance that famous speech reads a bit more like:
“To be or not to be, that is the Queƒtion:
Whether ‘tis Nobler in the minde to ƒuffer
The Slings and Arrowes of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take Armes againƒt a Sea of Troubles,
And by oppoƒing end them: to dye, to ƒleepe.”
“You have to realize our language was younger then. Our language now is older. It’s like a child,” Jensen said. “But the ideas are still there… And those ideas are not gone: jealousy, ambition, love. It is just set in a different language.”
Jensen and Elmore compare it to a music score.
“I can read music — not very well — but hearing music is something that has an emotion response. Everybody has that,” Elmore said. “Having Shakespeare on a page is absolutely vital, precious and marvelous and wonderful … but hearing it in human voice is transporting.”
Which is what the Theatre in the Rough aims to do with their near-nightly readings at six locations around Juneau — the Juneau Arts and Culture Center on Mondays, the University of Alaska Southeast Egan Library on Tuesdays, the Rockwell on Wednesdays, the Mendenhall Valley Library on Thursdays, the SLAM on Fridays, and McPhetres Hall in Holy Trinity Church on Saturdays. (See the full schedule on page 15).
The readings will all have some aspect of a performance — whether that’s music, swordfights, or eternal love declared from the SLAM balcony.
“It’s not going to be just a cold reading,” Elmore said.
They are not encouraging a quiet, scholarly atmosphere either. At the Rockwell, “Julius Caesar” will be accompanied by bloody drinks available for purchase at the bar and watching “Titus Andronicus” cook a queen’s sons into a pie might make you rethink your dinner. At McPhetres Hall, there will be coffee for the “Marathon Saturdays” and you can bring your own snacks.
“If you want to bring popcorn or hazelnuts and throw them at the actors that’s fine,” Elmore said.
“Because that’s what they would have done” in Shakespeare’s time, adds Jensen.
The middle two Saturdays, Aug. 6 and Aug. 13, will be dedicated to Shakespeare’s eight histories covering the War of the Roses, which Elmore describes as “‘Game of Thrones’ Elizabethan style.
“He did the reigns of these kings, but it’s not about the kings … It’s about all these guys who either hate each other or love each other or want something. They’re just struggling to try to make the world right.”
Not all locations will be so freewheeling — don’t expect a swordfight to break out in the same room as the First Folio — but the Theatre in the Rough crew don’t want you to “sit quietly and be Shakespeare’d out,” either.
“If anybody wants to hear a play they’ve never heard before, this is a good opportunity to do that. Or if you want to come back and hear your favorite, you can also do that,” Elmore said.
Or not to go
Elmore and Jensen also admit that for many who hated Shakespeare in school, a whole month of plays and Shakespeare-related events may not sound like a party they want to go to.
“What we found is a lot of people do get turned off from an early age,” Elmore said, a side effect of reading what should be seen and heard. Like a vegetable they don’t want to eat, Shakespeare is forced on them, leading to what is sometimes a lifelong apathy.
It’s approached as “you should eat this; you’ll like it,” Elmore said. But “that’s not the scholars’ intention. It’s certainly not our intention. We’re making a feast. We really love this and we think you’ll like it too.”
Jensen stresses the popular aspect of Shakespeare and his work. He describes him as a “wildcat” and “a bohemian in the biggest way,” comparing the time he worked to the “Moulin Rouge” era of Paris.
“These were playwrights that would get in fights in bars. … They were not these stodgy guys, so what they wrote was the human story,” Jensen said. “Our job is to go in there, find the heart of it … what these humans were feeling because … we as human beings are actually still very much the same.”
It is this human story that the yellowed pages of the First Folio tells and that the performances, lectures and youth activities seek to bring to a modern audience during its month in the 49th state.
The First Folio’s historic importance should not be understated. “I think we’d be a different society if we has lost (the plays in the Folio),” Jensen said. It’s not “simply an object that people come and look at and go away,” she adds. “For us its alive and when it’s heard, it’ll be alive.”
Hadassah Nelson is “Henry V” in Theatre in the Rough’s production at McPhetres Hall in February 2015.
Rehearsal of William Shakespeare’s “Othello” at Perseverance Theatre in September 2015.
Rehearsal of William Shakespeare’s “Othello” at Perseverance Theatre in September 2015.
