SF Shakes talks Shakespeare On Tour’s 2023 production “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” with Director Sydney Schwindt.
Sydney is a Resident Artist with SF Shakes and an actor, fight director, teaching artist, and visual artist. She is also a visiting professor of movement (specializing in Commedia and Clown) at Indiana University and the former stage combat instructor for the graduate program at American Conservatory Theater. Along with bringing her experience of physical […]
The Story of the Sonnets, for Valentine’s Day
This is the transcript of a presentation I gave on Thursday, Feb. 12, 2015 at the Presidio Officers’ Club, as part of the Presidio Trust Heritage Program. The sonnets were read by SF Shakes Resident Artists Emily Jordan and Radhika Rao, as well as volunteers from the audience. This is the story of Shakespeare’s sonnets. […]
The Year of the Shrew, Part One: Pastime Passing Excellent
Tim Kniffin (Petruccio) and Carla Pantoja (Katherina) in SF Shakes’ upcoming production of The Taming of the Shrew. Next week, we go into rehearsal for The Taming of the Shrew, and the season we’re calling The Year of the Shrew kicks into high gear. From the moment when we decided to produce this controversial comedy, […]
GUEST BLOG: OUR HEARTS ARE MIGHTY – My Internship at SF Shakes by Sabrina Rosenfield
(Sabrina Rosenfield, above left, served as a Stage Management intern during the summers of 2012 and 2013, and an Education intern before that. Prior to high school, she attended Shakespeare Camp for many years. She’s now majoring in stage management at Emerson College. She offered to contribute a guest blog about her experience as an […]
WHAT WOULD SHAKESPEARE DO? Advice from 400-year-old Players
In August, some sad news spread across the Shakespeare world – Shakespeare Santa Cruz, an acclaimed 32-year-old professional company on the UC Santa Cruz campus, was told by the University that it will have to close in December, unless its board members and fans can manage to re-invent it as an independent non-profit. SSC’s 2013 […]
HOLDING THE MIRROR UP TO NATURE: Casting Shakespeare for Today’s Audiences
A few weeks ago, in our weekly intern company meeting, I did a session about casting. After we went over the basics of headshots, resumes, cover letters, and interview etiquette, I set them a task – cast the 9 major roles of Romeo and Juliet (Romeo, Juliet, Nurse, Friar, Lord Capulet, Lady Capulet, Mercutio, Tybalt, […]
Rogues and Vagabonds: Pop-up Shakespeare and the history of performance
Over the last two weekends, we’ve been performing “pop-up Shakespeare” in unexpected locations in Cupertino and San Francisco, as part of the Free Shakespeare in the Parklet project. This is the first time we’ve performed pop-ups anywhere but SF, and I had some trepidation about moving outside the “only in San Francisco” bubble. I imagined […]
Sorcery and Skullduggery: The Return of Free Shakespeare in the Parklet
In 2012, to commemorate SF Shakes’ 30th anniversary of performing Free Shakespeare in the Park in San Francisco, we devised a unique celebration – 30 separate performances of scenes from 30 of Shakespeare’s plays in small parks all over San Francisco– primarily “parklets,” green spaces devised from parking spaces in front of cafes and restaurants. […]
Out, Out, Brief Candle: The Fleeting Nature of Summer Shakespeare
Do you remember summer sleep-away camp? That bubble of time that seemed to both last forever and be over much too fast, that indescribable mix of sensory experiences – the dirt under your fingernails, the smell of campfires in your hair, the taste of mess hall pancakes, the squishy squeak as each kid in your […]
My Voice is in my Sword: Violence in “Macbeth”
Last Friday, I went to see our young Shakespeare campers perform scenes from Macbeth and Twelfh Night at McLaren Park in San Francisco. During the brief intermission between performances, a few rambunctious young campers leaped on stage and at the command “Die dramatically!”, they enthusiastically stabbed themselves with cardboard daggers, chopped their own heads off […]