News from Shakespeare at Pendleton and Local Opportunities

Colleagues:

Late last year, a family of alumni decided to dedicate their Christmas giving to a nonprofit, so they gave around $1700 to Huntington University for the Shakespeare at Pendleton program! This has put this program in a good financial situation going forward (but donations are always appreciated).

The Pendleton Shakespeareans are currently working creating a performance of monologues and scenes from a variety of plays: As You Like It, Titus Andronicus, Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Much Ado about Nothing, interspersed with a few non-Shakespeare scenes. We hope to have this ready for presentation at the end of the semester. Then, after a summer hiatus, we are going into our third complete play, Julius Caesar, using a text provided to us by the Indiana Repertory Theatre. We have plans!

While we were working on Coriolanus in 2015, a crew was filming a feature movie at Pendleton. This movie, O.G., has Jeffrey Wright, a well-known character actor, in the lead role, and a few of the Pendleton Shakespeareans in supporting roles:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVZevJr-WQ8. I have been invited to attend its premiere at the prison on Thursday, February 21, and you may see the movie on HBO a few days later. At the same time, the filmmakers created a documentary with animators based on interviews of the prison film actors, again including two of the Shakespeareans. You may see a clip of them here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWU7cm7Qpxk. This film too will premier on HBO at the end of the month.

Finally, REAL Community Covenant Church in Marion is hosting an event next Wednesday evening, 6-8 p.m., Locked in Solidarity: The Impact of Mass Incarceration on Families. The event is free. I’m going; let me know if you’d like a ride with me.