In October 1983, the Riverside Shakespeare Company, then New York City's only year-round professional Shakespeare theatre company, [1] inaugurated The Shakespeare Project, based at the theatre company's home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, The Shakespeare Center. The Shakespeare Project was the first major New York residency of actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company - with Edwin Richfield, Heather Canning, Christopher Ravenscroft, Jennie Stoller and John Kane (the later two from Peter Brook's A Midsummer Night's Dream ) - for a week of public workshops, panel discussions, seminars and performances at the company's Upper West Side theatre, The Shakespeare Center. The event was launched at a luncheon in the Shakespeare Room of the Algonquin Hotel attended by Joseph Papp, Helen Hayes, Frank Rich, Gloria Skurski, W. Stuart McDowell, and members of the Royal Shakespeare Company in mid October 1983. According to the New York Times, over one thousand actors, students, teachers and stage directors, from the ages of 15 to 87, signed up for 22 sessions taught by some of the leading actors from London's Royal Shakespeare Company. [2]
The Riverside Shakespeare Company of New York City was founded in 1977 as a professional (AEA) theatre company on the Upper West Side of New York City, by W. Stuart McDowell and Gloria Skurski. Focusing on Shakespeare plays and other classical repertoire, it operated through 1997.
The City of New York, usually called either New York City (NYC) or simply New York (NY), is the most populous city in the United States and thus also in the state of New York. With an estimated 2017 population of 8,622,698 distributed over a land area of about 302.6 square miles (784 km2), New York is also the most densely populated major city in the United States. Located at the southern tip of the state of New York, the city is the center of the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass and one of the world's most populous megacities, with an estimated 20,320,876 people in its 2017 Metropolitan Statistical Area and 23,876,155 residents in its Combined Statistical Area. A global power city, New York City has been described as the cultural, financial, and media capital of the world, and exerts a significant impact upon commerce, entertainment, research, technology, education, politics, tourism, art, fashion, and sports. The city's fast pace has inspired the term New York minute. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy.
The Upper West Side, sometimes abbreviated UWS, is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, New York City, bounded by Central Park and the Hudson River, and West 59th Street and West 110th Street.
At the launching of The Shakespeare Project, Marilyn Stasio of The New York Post, called it "the adventurous Shakespeare Project involving the five guests from the Royal Shakespeare Company...a unique venture." Stasio added, "Everybody at the opening night party, including such members of the theatrical community as Milo O'Shea, Barnard Hughes and Gloria Foster, seemed to want to a regular event of the unprecedented project." [3] In the evenings, the five actor also performed a "five-hander" version of Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice , Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood , and the New York premiere of D. H. Lawrence's The Tarnished Phoenix.
Marilyn Stasio is a New York City area author, writer and literary critic. She has been the "Crime Columnist" for The New York Times Book Review since about 1988, having written over 650 reviews as of January 2009. She says she reads "a few" crime books a year professionally and many more for pleasure. She also writes for Variety, The New York Post, New York magazine and others. She has served as a dramaturg at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center.
Milo Donal O'Shea was an Irish actor. He received two Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play nominations for his performances in Staircase (1968) and Mass Appeal (1982).
Bernard Aloysius Kiernan "Barnard" Hughes was an American actor of television, theater and film. Hughes became famous for a variety of roles; his most-notable roles came after middle age, and he was often cast as a dithering authority figure or grandfatherly elder.
The week-long residency drew sell-out crowds at its two venues, the All Angels Episcopal Church at Lincoln Center, and The Shakespeare Center - the home of the Riverside Shakespeare Company, located in West Park Presbyterian Church at Amsterdam Avenue and West 86th Street in Manhattan. The Host Committee for The Shakespeare Project included Henry Guettel, Leonard Bernstein, Helen Hayes, Bernard Jacobs, John V. Lindsay, Joseph Papp and George Plimpton.
86th Street is a major two-way street in the Upper East Side and Upper West Side of the New York City borough of Manhattan.
Leonard Bernstein was an American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the US to receive worldwide acclaim. According to music critic Donal Henahan, he was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history."
Helen Hayes MacArthur was an American actress whose career spanned 80 years. She eventually received the nickname "First Lady of American Theatre" and was one of 15 people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony Award. Hayes also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor, from President Ronald Reagan in 1986. In 1988, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts.
