Charles Marowitz - Böcker

Recycling Shakespeare is an irreverent assault on the Shakespearian establishment which presumes to have squatter's rights on the 'collected works' which it treats as holy writ. Marowitz, himself both a critic and director with successful productions of nearly a dozen Shakespeare plays behind him, shows how Shakespeare, like so many of his own earlier sources, can be reused, restructured and recycled for contemporary consumption.

Based almost entirely on the author's personal experiences, this concise handbook follows a director's journey from the casting process to opening night, revealing the hidden or unspoken aspects of play and stage production that are rarely, if ever, described in theater manuals and textbooks. Mr. Marowitz discusses topics such as rehearsals, characterization, blocking, tempo-rhythm, dramaturgy, and actor-and-audience psychology, demystifying an art form that is often dealt with only in terms of concepts and ideology rather than the mundane, nitty-gritty nuts-and-bolts requirements of just “getting the show on the road.”

In the same way that Shakespeare himself continued to meditate and transform his own ideas and the shape they took Marowitz gives us license to continue that meditation in productions extrapolated from Shakespeare's work. Shakespeare becomes the greatest of all catalysts who stimulates a constant re-formulation of the fundamental questions of philosophy history and meaning. Marowitz introduces us to Shakespeare as an active contemporary collaborator who strives with us to yield a vibrant contemporary theatre.

The acclaimed stage director and theatre critic Charles Marowitz in tandem with Jan Kott, one of the most penetrating and incisive Shakespearean scholars to emerge in the 20th Century, probe the mysteries of some of the more problematic plays in Shakespeare's canon. The innovative director and dazzling classicist bring two complementary viewpoints to bear as they delve into the collected works, illuminating the constantly changing nature and philosophic nuances of the various plays. The book's centerpiece consists of Kott and Marowitz's insights on such plays as Othello, Romeo & Juliet, Troilus & Cressida and Measure for Measure. They reveal the ideas behind Shakespeare's plays and the process of making them come alive before and audience and present frank, no-holds barred discussions on such subjects as The Shakespeare Industry, The Boundaries of Interpretation, Dramaturgy and Mise-en-scene.

The first 30 years of the 20th-century produced a theatrical explosion whose reverberations are still felt today. Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, Vakhtanghov, Michael Chekhov in Russia; Reinhardt, Piscator & Brecht in Germany; and Copeau, Barrault & Artaud in France collectively demolished the 19th-century aesthetic and, in their wake, created the modernity which is the hallmark of today's theatre.Most of these men have already been turned into modern icons; there is no shortage of bios on the pioneers of the Moscow Arts Theatre, and the achievements of the others are chronicled and archived for posterity. Only one of these artists remains murky and ill-defined. He is Michael Chekhov (1891-1955), nephew of the famous playwright Anton Chekhov, the man that Stanislavsky described as “the most brilliant actor in all of Russia.”A charismatic actor, an inspiring director and a teacher that developed a dynamic antidote to Russian Naturalism, Chekhov remains the invisible man of the modern theatre. Was he, as Lee Strasberg alleged, a dangerous mystic who would subvert the vigor of Stanislavsky's teachings and undermine the integrity of The Group Theatre? Or was he, as his disciples – Yul Brynner, Gregory Peck, Ingrid Bergman, Anthony Quinn, Jack Palance, Leslie Caron, Jennifer Jones, Patricia Neal, Anthony Hopkins, Jack Nicholson & Marilyn Monroe – believed, a man who had discovered a unique approach to acting which transcended the precepts enshrined in Stanislavsky's “System.”Charles Marowitz was granted special access to the Chekhov archives in Devon, England, and he interviewed actors and directors who worked closely with Chekhov both in Europe and America. The book chronicles Chekhov's influential period in Hollywood when he was nominated for an Oscar for his performance as the avuncular psychiatrist in Alfred Hitchcock's 1945 film Spellbound. It also describes his close association with Marilyn Monroe at the most delicate stage of her career.