January Blogroll: Best of 2017

Dear readers:

 I don’t think I have to tell you this was a bizarre year. Everything in public life seemed to be going straight in the bin, and yet things for me professionally have only progressed positively. A number of long-awaited publications came into print, including the recent volume of Shakespeare Studies. I attended several conferences and workshops in three countries, saw far too many Much Ado About Nothings, started doing a great more public outreach, and blogged through two Shakespeare festivals—one at the American Shakespeare Center and the other with my hometown company, the Original Practice Shakespeare Festival. Here are some of your (and my!) favorite posts from Bite Thumbnails this past year.

My favorite view: some lovely folks doing smart things with Shakespeare—through a beer glass. OPS Fest performing The Tempest at the Mission Theatre.

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WIL Festival 1.1: “Romeo and Juliet”

For the next three weekends, the Original Practice Shakespeare Festival (a.k.a. OPS Fest or OPSF) will be holding their WIL Festival. The aim is to perform all 15 Shakespeare plays they have in their repertoire—they add two each year—over successive weekends. Aside from the opportunity to get speedy exposure to half of William Shakespeare’s oeuvre, this is also as close as you might get to seeing the plays in the system for which they were designed: in repertory.

From left: Kaia Maarja Hillier (Juliet), Jonah Leidigh (Paris), Alec Lugo (Nurse), Joel Patrick Durham (Tybalt), Isabella Buckner (Prompter), accompanied by musicians Rachel Saville and David Bellis-Squires.

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