Season: 2011

The greatest and fullest characters Shakespeare ever created are in Henry IV, pt 1, and Henry IV, pt 2. They are noble and despicable, brilliant and manipulative, side-splittingly funny and devastatingly heart-breaking.

He gave me a demonstration of how a longbowman could, in the absence of his namesake weapon, slam a blunt dagger through a visor into the bridge of the enemy’s nose, hammering it in, and severing the nervous system of the now very-dead foe.

And if that wasn’t enough I thought I’d just give the bow string a pull while he turned the other way, and the draw-weight of over 70 lbs (half the draw-weight of an actual medieval bow) nearly ripped the tendons from my back.

Yes, the battlefield was so large we needed to drive around it. This surprised both of us, because most of the American battlefields we’ve seen, are pretty small. But when you figure this battle comprised of 5,000 to 8,000 English soldiers and somewhere between 15,000 to 25,000 French soldiers, the field to hold all 20,000-33,000 would have to be at least as large as this one. We circled it a few times, and I felt it again, the same feeling I got when we visited Shrewsbury, that sense that people died here. I’m not Haley Joel Osmet– it’s not like I “see dead people.” But when that many souls are lost in one place, you can’t help but feel the charge in the air that hangs above the site.

My understanding of this town (D.C.) is that nothing is what it seems, and that everything is a conspiracy.

Dreams Come True! About 4 years back I imagined we’d produce cool hip-hop theater at Oregon Shakespeare Festival and somehow collect the intelligence and passion and knowledge of all the artists we’d work with and then connect it to education on a national level. (I tend to dream big) But check it out- BAM!