Stratford Shakespeare Festival to Host Shakespeare Symposium, 6/2

The Festival celebrates 60 years of excellence with a special symposium that will feature influential theatre artists and intellectuals in discussion about how Shakespeare's work lends itself to a broad range of media, interpretations and settings. The event will be held at the Studio Theatre on June 2. 

Entitled Interpreting Shakespeare Across Settings and Media, the symposium will feature actor Colm Feore, who will speak about his Shakespeare work on stage, film and television; actor, director and producer Norman Lloyd, who will talk about his Shakespeare work in various media; Dr. Katherine Rowe, Professor of English at Bryn Mawr College, who will address the theme of the Symposium in the context of her media and digital studies; and the Festival's Director of Archives, Dr. Francesca Marini.

The symposium is open to the public and is scheduled from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tickets are $20 plus HST and are available for purchase through the Festival's box office, 1.800.567.1600 or online at www.stratfordshakespearefestival.com.

"Providing context and opportunities for deeper understanding of our work is an important part of the Stratford experience," says General Director Antoni Cimolino. "This symposium and all of our enrichment activities allow people to get away and immerse themselves in a world of ideas and inspiration. We are delighted that three such important figures have agreed to join us for this event, including Colm Feore, who over 16 seasons at Stratford has portrayed dozens of Shakespeare's leading characters. With a wealth of experience in performing Shakespeare on stage and screen, he will bring a fascinating perspective to the Symposium."

"Norman Lloyd's career has spanned an extraordinary 70 plus years," says Artistic Director Des McAnuff. "As an actor and director, he has collaborated with some of the great artists of our times – Orson Welles, John Houseman, and Alfred Hitchcock among them. He has been celebrated for his work in theatre, film and television. I had the great pleasure of meeting Norman when I became Artistic Director of La Jolla Playhouse, where he directed for many years when it was run by Gregory Peck. And I was pleased to direct him in my motion picture The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle as the President of Wossamotta U and I am thrilled that he will join us for this symposium on Shakespeare."

Mr. Feore will speak about his Shakespeare work on stage, in film and on TV. One of Stratford's most beloved actors, Mr. Feore has been active at the Festival since 1981; his roles there include Macbeth, Cyrano, Coriolanus, Fagin in Oliver!, Hamlet, Romeo, Richard III, Iago in Othello, Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew and Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. He played Cassius opposite Denzel Washington in Julius Caesar on Broadway and received the St. Clair Bayfield Award. Film credits include Titus,Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (Genie nomination), Thor, Clint Eastwood's Changeling, The Trotsky, Bon Cop, Bad Cop (Genie nomination), The Perfect Son (Genie nomination), Chicago, The Insider, The Chronicles of Riddick, The Red Violin(Jutra Award), The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Paycheck, The Sum of All Fears, City of Angels and Face/Off. His television roles include Henry Taylor in season seven of 24; other credits include Trudeau (Gemini and Monte Carlo Television Festival awards),Law & Order SVU, The West Wing, Boston Public, Nuremberg, The Day Reagan Was Shot, Benjamin Franklin, And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself and Slings and Arrows. Mr. Feore is currently starring in Neil Jordan's The Borgias with Jeremy Irons. 

Norman Lloyd, actor, director and producer, will speak about his Shakespeare work in different media. Renowned worldwide for his stage, film and television work, Mr. Lloyd apprenticed with Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theater in New York and made his Broadway debut as Japhet in Noah in 1935. He worked with legendary director and actor Orson Welles in Welles's Mercury Theatre company, taking part in its groundbreaking 1937 stage production of Julius Caesar. Other stage roles include the Fool inKing Lear opposite Louis Calhern (1950) and Lucio in Measure for Measure (1956-1957). Mr. Lloyd made his directorial debut in 1948 with The Road to Rome at La Jolla Playhouse and developed a very long and strong association with that theatre. His film and television work includes the title role in Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942) and Dr. Auschlander in the 1980s TV series St. Elsewhere. Still very active, Mr. Lloyd was recently seen on TV's Modern Family (2010). The subject of the 2007 documentaryWho Is Norman Lloyd? and the author of Stages: Of Life in Theatre, Film, and Television (2004), he is attending the Cannes Film Festival this May.

Dr. Katherine Rowe is an internationally recognized expert in digital humanities who teaches and writes about literature and media change. Trained as a scholar of Renaissance drama, she turned her attention to questions of media history and adaptation. Her courses explore the history of reading, writing and performance, from the Renaissance to the digital age. A recipient of prestigious research grants, DR. Rowe is Associate Editor of The Cambridge World Shakespeare Online and co-founder, with Elliott Visconsi, of Luminary Digital Media (luminarydigitalmedia.com), publisher of the Shakespeare's The Tempest for iPad. She served on the editorial board of Shakespeare Quarterly. With Dr. Thomas Cartelli, she is the co-author of New Wave Shakespeare on Screen (2007). 

Dr. Francesca Marini will chair the session and moderate the question-and-answer period. Since July 2010, Dr. Marini has been Archives Director at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Prior to this position, she was Assistant Professor at the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. The holder of a Ph.D. in Library and Information Science (UCLA) and a bachelor's degree in Theatre Studies (University of Bologna, Italy), she has studied as an archivist in Italy. A leading expert in performing-arts archiving, she has been engaged in several research projects. She presents widely at national and international conferences, and publishes in archival and performing-arts journals. A member of the Board of the New York-based Theatre Library Association, she belongs to several scholarly and professional associations.

Support for the Symposium is generously provided by Dr. Jules and Josephine Harris.