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Shakespeare & Beyond

Play On Shakespeare: Reflections from the translation project's festival of staged readings

Play On festival opening
Play On festival opening
Play On festival opening

Play On Executive Director Lue Douthit gives remarks before the festival’s first staged reading: The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Lue Morgan Douthit first wrote about the Play on! project (of which she is the executive director) on the Shakespeare & Beyond blog in February 2018. Since then, we’ve published 10 Q&As with playwrights and dramaturgs engaged in the work of translating Shakespeare’s plays into contemporary English. They shared insights into the translation process and why Shakespeare’s plays continue to resonate with audiences today.

In January 2019 the project spun off from its home at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and became Play On Shakespeare, and last month the 39 play translations came to life at a festival of staged readings in New York. Douthit wraps up our Play on! blog post series with initial reflections from the festival, just days after the whirlwind came to a close.


The Play On Shakespeare Translation Festival at Classic Stage Company in New York was both a culmination and a beginning.

Let’s start with the numbers:

  • 39 staged readings in 33 days;
  • 143 actors, of which more than 60 participated in the entire five weeks, with 40 more who participated in more than one reading;
  • 33 playwrights and 23 dramaturgs who participated in rehearsal and/or attended the reading of their translation;
  • 34 directors, 16 stage managers, 6 production assistants, 4 producers;
  • At least 80,000 pieces of three-hole punch paper; 30 music stands; 120 three ring binders;
  • And one patron. (That would be Dave Hitz, who also co-founded Play on Shakespeare with me in January.)

We began with Two Gentlemen of Verona and ended with Two Noble Kinsmen. In the first week we staged the “apprentice” plays from early in Shakespeare’s career. Next came the “poetic” week with King John, Richard II, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, and Merchant of Venice. The third week highlighted Shakespeare’s mastery, covering the plays written in 1599. The fourth week had some very dark plays, like Measure for Measure, All’s Well that Ends Well, Timon of Athens, King Lear, and Macbeth. The fifth and final week brought in the magic and the willing suspension of disbelief with Pericles, Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, and Cymbeline, and Two Noble Kinsmen.