Polishing Shakespeare

By Brian Dykstra, Directed by Margarett Perry

July 1, 2019

From Polishing Shakespeare:

“It’s not the plays! The plays are great! It’s just that no one does The plays. They do some version of the play”

“Brian Dykstra is a master of language” -Huffington Post

When a dot-com billionaire offers a theatre a large sum of money for the translations of Shakespeare plays into more understandable, contemporary English, the artistic director and the commissioned writers have to confront the complexities of the challenge, their respect for the original source material and the pressures of surviving as theatre artists in an age where the commercial often outstrips the artistic. Polishing Shakespeare, written in iambic pentameter, explores their shifting loyalties, to each other the art form and the Bard.