Tyrant, Show Thy Face – A Benefit for Actor’s Shakespeare Project

How does a truly disastrous leader – a sociopath, a demagogue, a tyrant – come to power?
How, and why, does a tyrant hold on to power? And what goes on in the hidden recesses of the tyrant’s soul?

For help in understanding our most urgent contemporary dilemmas, William Shakespeare has no peer.
In the new book Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics, Pulitzer-prize winning author and Shakespeare Scholar STEPHEN GREENBLATT examines the themes of power and tyranny in some of Shakespeare’s most famous plays — from the dominating figures of Richard III, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Coriolanus to the subtle tyranny found in Measure for Measure and The Winter’s Tale.

WGBH’s Executive Arts Editor & Host of Open Studio JARED BOWEN will join Greenblatt on stage for a conversation about the relevance of these themes in today’s world.

ASP Resident Acting Company members and ASP Youth will collaborate with Greenblatt to illuminate Shakespeare’s tyrants, from the fierce to the funny, with excerpts from Shakespeare’s plays and devised interactive performance pieces.

 

 


Independent Film Festival Boston: Nothing is Truer Than Truth, A Documentary about Shakespeare

NOTHING IS TRUER THAN TRUTH will premiere at the Independent Film Festival Boston. Please help us celebrate at the historic Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square on SUNDAY APRIL 29TH at 1:00 P.M. There will be a post-screening Q&A session with director Cheryl Eagan-Donovan, and cast and crew from the film, followed by a reception. Festival badges and tickets are available at IFFB.org.

NOTHING IS TRUER THAN TRUTH introduces Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, A-list party boy on the continental circuit, who spent a year and a half in Venice and traveling in Italy, learning about commedia dell’arte and collecting the experiences that would become known as the works of Shakespeare. Filmed in Venice, Verona, Mantua, Padua, and Brenta, the film ventures to actual sites De Vere visited in 1575-76, including the settings for The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, and Two Gentlemen of Verona. The film features renowned Shakespeare scholars, actors, and directors, including Sir Derek Jacobi, Mark Rylance, Tina Packer, and Diane Paulus, and argues that De Vere’s bisexuality is the reason for the pseudonym “Shake-speare.”

Grub Street instructor and screenwriting consultant Cheryl Eagan-Donovan’s debut feature All Kindsa Girls screened at film festivals and art house theaters in London, Toronto and the U.S., was short-listed for the PBS series POV, and is featured in Paul Sherman’s book Big Screen Boston. She served on the Board of Directors of Women in Film & Video New England, The Next Door Theater, and The Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship. She teaches writing, literature, and filmmaking and has published articles on Shakespeare and film.


How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Body, and Brain

Harvard Book Store welcomes psychologists DANIEL GOLEMAN and RICHARD J. DAVIDSON for a discussion of their book, Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body.

In the last twenty years, meditation and mindfulness have gone from being kind of cool to becoming an omnipresent Band-Aid for fixing everything from your weight to your relationship to your achievement level. Unveiling here the kind of cutting-edge research that has made them giants in their fields, DANIEL GOLEMAN and RICHARD DAVIDSON show us the truth about what meditation can really do for us, as well as exactly how to get the most out of it.

This event is ticketed.  You may purchase tickets here.

The book will be on sale at the event for 20% off.


SALMAN RUSHDIE with his latest novel, The Golden House

Harvard Book Store and the Mahindra Humanities Center welcome internationally renowned author SALMAN RUSHDIE for a discussion of his latest novel, The Golden House—a modern American epic that is equal parts The Great Gatsby and The Bonfire of the Vanities, set against the panorama of contemporary politics and culture.  Mr. Rushdie will be joined in conversation by HOMI K. BHABHA, Director of the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University.

On the day of Barack Obama’s inauguration, an enigmatic billionaire from foreign shores takes up residence in the architectural jewel of “the Gardens,” a cloistered community in New York’s Greenwich Village.  Along with his improbable name, untraceable accent, and unmistakable whiff of danger, Nero Golden has brought along his three adult sons.  There is no mother, no wife; at least not until Vasilisa, a sleek Russian expat, snags the septuagenarian Nero, becoming the queen to his king—a queen in want of an heir.

This event is ticketed.  You may purchase tickets here.  Tickets include a copy of The Golden House.

This event is co-sponsored with The Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University.