#Workshop with #DameJanetSuzman Feb 8th - Shakespeare and Manias

This will explore #melancholy and #mania focusing on the perennially Eeyorish Jaques in As You Like It & the unrepentent psychopath Iago in Othello.

---

This workshop is the second Shakespeare in Italy is running in partnership with PropsMental Health @PropsMHealth for our 15 minute playwriting competition 'Lockdown, Taboo and You.'

https://www.trybooking.com/uk/eventlist/shakespeareinitaly

collette@shakespeareinitaly.org.uk for info re: submissions etc

Suzman knows better than most it is partly the full throttle, no holds barred poetry of Shakespeare that, for modern readers, makes him such an effective lightning rod for the soul.

"The Elizabethans weren't frightened of words in the way we are today," says Suzman. " We've reduced language to the size of a Tweet, and use banal little emoticons to express very complex feelings. Whereas Shakespeare is a black piste writer; all his characters are on a precipice."

Of course, Shakespeare would never have heard the words "mental health" bandied about in Elizabethan England. Suzman dismisses the term entirely believing it, " far too bland an expression to use in relation to a writer who is the most exciting to have ever lived."

Suzman says Shakespeare is so effective when taught in prisons. "Everyone in prison is in some sort of crisis. Many prisoners who study Shakespeare are not recidivists, because through reading and performing him they are able to find some sort of self expression. Speaking your feelings and thoughts gives you agency. Whereas if you are unable to speak about your thoughts, then no one is able to help you.

There is nothing self pitying about Shakespeare. He doesn't set out to comfort you. Hamlet is a black diamond of a play - every facet of light bouncing off it is about death and murder, and the rest is silence. But it's not a depressing play. It's enlightening. Shakespeare doesn't do sentimentality. he does sentiment. And that's the difference."

Shakespeare is good for the blues not because he offers quick fixes but because no other writer captures so clearly the truth of life as a mysterious struggle in which we are all to varying degrees engaged.

#JanetSuzman workshop - #paywhatyoucan for Feb 8th workshop

#melancholy #mania #crisis #actors #theatredirectors #playwrights #theatreinprison #Shakespeareinprison #quickfix #blues #depression