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.
STEPHEN GREENBLATT shares his latest book, Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics.
Harvard Book Store and Mass Humanities welcome Harvard professor and Pulitzer Prize–winning author STEPHEN GREENBLATT for a discussion of his latest book, Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics. This is a ticketed event.
About Tyrant
As an aging, tenacious Elizabeth I clung to power, a talented playwright probed the social causes, the psychological roots, and the twisted consequences of tyranny. In exploring the psyche (and psychoses) of the likes of Richard III, Macbeth, Lear, Coriolanus, and the societies they rule over, Stephen Greenblatt illuminates the ways in which William Shakespeare delved into the lust for absolute power and the catastrophic consequences of its execution.
Cherished institutions seem fragile, political classes are in disarray, economic misery fuels populist anger, people knowingly accept being lied to, partisan rancor dominates, spectacular indecency rules―these aspects of a society in crisis fascinated Shakespeare and shaped some of his most memorable plays. With uncanny insight, he shone a spotlight on the infantile psychology and unquenchable narcissistic appetites of demagogues―and the cynicism and opportunism of the various enablers and hangers-on who surround them―and imagined how they might be stopped. As Greenblatt shows, Shakespeare’s work, in this as in so many other ways, remains vitally relevant today.
STEPHEN GREENBLATT: The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve
This is a must-see for all literature lovers. Harvard Book Store welcomes Pulitzer Prize– and National Book Award–winning author STEPHEN GREENBLATT for a discussion of his latest book, The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve.
Tracking the tale into the deep past, Greenblatt uncovers the tremendous theological, artistic, and cultural investment over centuries that made these fictional figures so profoundly resonant in the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim worlds and, finally, so very “real” to millions of people even in the present. With the uncanny brilliance he previously brought to his depictions of William Shakespeare and Poggio Bracciolini (the humanist monk who is the protagonist of The Swerve), Greenblatt explores the intensely personal engagement of Augustine, Dürer, and Milton in this mammoth project of collective creation, while he also limns the diversity of the story’s offspring: rich allegory, vicious misogyny, deep moral insight, and some of the greatest triumphs of art and literature.
This event is ticketed. You may purchase tickets here.
The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve will be on sale at the event for 20% off.
