Interviews

Welcome to the online interview section of the CASP website. Here you will find exclusive interviews done by project research associates with living playwrights and theatre practitioners on their work in productions that have a Shakespearean component.

Visitors to the site may be surprised at the range of debate over what constitutes Shakespearean adaptation and by the diversity of views on how and why Shakespeare has been adapted in differing theatrical practices throughout Canada. We have sought to interview people from across a broad spectrum of theatrical experiences and to identify what their work has to say about adaptation in a Canadian context inflected by Shakespearean resonances.

Included here are PDF transcripts of the interviews themselves, edited for readability, as well as, where available, audiovisual clips of relevant portions of the interviews. The complete interview tapes are available in the CASP archives.

You will require Adobe Acrobat Reader to read these documents; visit the Adobe website to download the reader for free.

To view the video clips you will require Windows Media Player, which can be downloaded for free at Microsoft.com.

Video Interviews Conducted by CASP:


Lewis Baumander	Peter Cockett

Lewis Baumander Video Interview

Chris Beard interviewed Lewis Baumander at the Lakeshore Campus of Humber College on January 12, 2007, about the 1995 production of Hamlet that he directed starring Keanu Reeves at the Manitoba Theatre Centre. Please visit the CASP page, "To Thine Own Self Be Excellent," by Beard for more information about Reeves's Hamlet.

Peter Cockett Video Interview

In January 2006, CASP researcher, Mat Buntin, sat down with Peter Cockett to talk about his adaptation of Henry V perfomed at McMaster University in 2005. This unique adaptation focused on the influence of Shakespeare and his language on modern media and its relation to war. By integrating huge amounts of audio and visual multimedia into the show, as well as using five different actors to play Henry V, Cockett was able to address a wide range of issues from identity, to race, class, and language––not to mention how these play into the construction of discourses of war. For more detailed production information please visit the database entry for Peter Cockett's Henry V.

Jean-Louis Roux Video Interview
In August 2005, Jean-Louis Roux and Douglas Campbell appeared for a limited run of Places Gentlemen, Please: Shakespeare, Molière, Love and Laughter as part of the Stratford Festival. After a matinee performance on August 5, 2005, Professor Ann Wilson (School of English and Theatre Studies, University of Guelph) chatted with Jean-Louis Roux in a conversation that began with Roux's introduction to Shakespeare at the school run by Jesuits which he attended, and included a discussion of Shakespeare in Quebec, and particularly, productions of Shakespeare at the Théâtre du Noveau Monde which he helped to found in 1951. Additionally, Roux chatted about francophone actors from Quebec performing at Stratford for several seasons during the 1950s.

Interviews Conducted by CASP (Text):

Margaret Clarke

Djanet Sears

Interviews Not Conducted by CASP:

Nick Craine Interview

Graham Greene Interview

In a 2007 interview with Jian Gomeshi, on the CBC radio program Q, prominent First Nations actor, Graham Greene, discusses his role of Shylock in the Stratford Festival's production of the Merchant of Venice. This controversial role, which has become a stigma of racial discourse prompts Greene to discuss aboriginality, racism and how this Shakespeare role holds poignant connections regarding aboriginal relations in Canada.

Gabriel Charpentier Interview

Jane Baldwin conducted an exclusive interview with Gabriel Charpentier for CASP in December 2005. In this extensive conversation Baldwin and Charpentier discuss music and colour, French and English Canadian theatre, and the creative and cultural influences on his work.

Kate Lynch Interview
Mirrlees, Tanner. "Kate Lynch's All-Woman Dream." Canadian Theatre Review 111 (Summer 2002): 50-59.

James Reaney Interview
Anthony, Geraldine, ed. "James Reaney." Stage Voices: Twelve Canadian Playwrights Talk About Their Lives and Work. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1978: 139-64. Please note that this book is no longer in print. CASP did not conduct this interview with Reaney, but since it contains valuable information on Shakespeare in Canada we have decided to include it on the website.

Disclaimer: This site has been designed with only non-commercial, academic uses in mind. Although every effort has been made to secure permission for materials uploaded on the CASP site, in some circumstances we have been unable to locate copyright holders. Links may be made to our site but under no conditions are the texts and images to be copied and mounted onto another site server. Researchers using the site should accredit it following standard MLA guidelines on how to do so. Correct citation of information from the site is as follows:

Fischlin, Daniel. Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project. University of Guelph. 2004.
<http://www.canadianshakespeares.ca>.