FollowScott Kaiser
aimed to be part of all of Shakespeare’s play—38 of them, if you don’t count The Regin of King Edward III. It’s a quest he started on in high school and with what must be a much-dog-eared copy of The Riverside Shakespeare. Arriving at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1985, with time off for teaching stints at Dule University, study at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, and an impressive resume of guest directing and teaching appointments, he has gravitated to Ashland ever since, coaching, performing, reading, and writing at the Shakespeare Festival through for 20 season. In Conquering the Canon: A Life in Shakespeare, Kaiser draws on his experiences to put new life into the study of Shakespeare.
Conquering the Canon is not the Shakespeare of the high school or college classroom or of the academic tome. Instead Kaiser combines his experiences as performer, voice coach, and fly-on-the-wall with his recounting of dozens of productions, sometimes several iterations of a particular play. We learn about the cast members he admires (and some he didn’t).
The book is divided into sections, first comes the comedies, beginning with Alls Well That Ends Well, and Kaiser’s introduction to Ashland and OSF. Then we get the histories (King John, Richards II and III, and all those Henries), the tragedies, and the romances ending with The Two Noble Kinsmen, which he thinks of as “The TOO Noble Kinsmen.” Along with his recollections of the productions, Kaiser treats us to some analysis of the language of the plays, just enough to keeps us connected to the text as well as the show. And from time to time he treats us to his original play Shakespeare’s Other Women: A New Anthology of Monologues, speeches for women characters that Shakespeare should have written.
We learn about the evolving production decisions, casting choices, approaches to roles, costuming nuances and flubs (like the neoprene suit the actor playing Caliban had to endure in 1986), and more. You’ll learn about acting and voice, theatre production, Shakespeare and his language, and human nature itself.
It’s a must-read for OSF fans, Shakespeare aficionados, acting students, and theatre buffs. You don’t have to conquers the canon alone; Scott Kaiser has done it for you.
