To celebrate the paperback release of How to Think like Shakespeare, I’ll be Zooming in to the Mechanics’ Institute, one of the oldest institutions on the West Coast of the United States. Its mission is to provide a center for intellectual and cultural advancement. Located in the financial district of San Francisco, it serves individuals and families throughout the Bay Area offering a vibrant library with full-time professional staff, expert instruction and competition in chess, and a full calendar of engaging cultural events, programs, and classes. Anyone can join the Institute for a small annual fee. Many of its activities and services for members are also open to non-members.

https://www.milibrary.org/events/how-think-shakespeare-lessons-renaissance-education-aug-27-2021

Why the name Mechanics'? — from the Foreword to Richard Reinhardt’s Four Books 300 Dollars and a Dream: An Illustrated History of the First 150 Years of the Mechanics' Institute.

“The word mechanic, as Walt Whitman would understand and celebrate this word by the 1840s, was not merely someone who worked with his or her hands, important as that might be. A mechanic was a skilled maker of things, an avid student of technology, a self-respecting yeoman eager to make his way in the world and the woman, in many instances, who accompanied him on this journey and shared his skills. Thus, the mechanic was the maker, the artisan, homo faber, man the fabricator, as the Romans would put it, or, from the perspective of ancient Greece, the master of techne, technique, be that techne the design of a temple, the sculpture of a statue, the construction of a house, the repair of a cart, or the joining of wood to stone to create a bench. The frontier San Francisco photographer Carleton Watkins, among others, saw himself as a working man, a mechanic, employing the tools of his trade to capture accurate and well-positioned images; such a lack of pretense, such a concern for foundational skills, whatever the project, was characteristic of his fellow mechanics in a variety of callings. In his poetry, Walt Whitman celebrated such mechanics, so ready to apply their skills to American life; and while the professors of Europe in their well-appointed laboratories struggled with the challenges of technological breakthrough, such American mechanics as Robert Fulton, Cyrus McCormick, Samuel F.B. Morse, Alexander Graham Bell, Lester Allen Pelton, and the Wright brothers achieved breakthroughs in the steamboat, the mechanical reaper, the telegraph, the telephone, the hydraulic wheel, and heavier-than-air flight that constituted the major technological innovations of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.”

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/shakespeare-4-ways-four-teachers-share-their-take-on-the-bard-online-tickets-153726495085

Join us for an evening celebrating and exploring Shakespeare with a panel featuring Cohen, Scott Newstok, Molly Booth, and Erica Cantley.

Paula Marantz Cohen, an English Professor at Drexel, has a timely book coming out in February 2021, “Of Human Kindness: What Shakespeare Can Teach Us About Empathy.” Scott Newstok, professor at Rhodes College, published his book “How to Think Like Shakespeare,” last year during the pandemic. Molly Horton Booth, a professor at Bunker Hill Community College in Massachusetts, has two fabulous YA novels, “Saving HAMLET” and “Nothing Happened. “Erica Cantley, former English teacher at the Academy of the New Church in Bryn Athyn, PA. Published her memoir “Teaching HAMLET as My Father Died” last year during the pandemic. 

Suggested $5 Donation

Join the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust on Wednesday 14 April for our free online monthly Research Conversation. Taking place on Zoom on the second Wednesday of every month, our Research Conversations provide you with the opportunity to attend free, online live sessions and listen to people who are engaged in Shakespeare-related research.

Orson Welles (1915–1985) adapted Shakespeare throughout his life, across continents and across media (stage, radio, television, film, and print). Less familiar are his experiments in staging other early modern dramatists, including Dekker, Jonson, Webster — and, most notably, Marlowe, from his boarding school version to his final film-script. Whether featuring Jack Carter as Mephistopheles (1937) or Eartha Kitt as Helen of Troy (1950), Welles’s Faustus productions entailed innovative casting, editing, and staging practices.

Led by Professor Scott Newstok, Rhodes College, Tennessee, USA

The event begins with a thirty minute presentation and will be followed by an open discussion.

https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/visit/whats-on/orson-welles-detour-from-shakespeare/

Book online for your free place.

All of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust's Research Conversations are free, but we encourage donations in order to support our work and keep Shakespeare's story alive.

This event is part of a special USA season of Research Conversations between April and June. We are grateful to the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C who has recommended three guest-speakers for this series, and the American Friends of The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust for their support.

In this Zoom conversation, Brian Jenner, founder of the European Speechwriter Network, will talk to Scott about his vision for a renaissance in Renaissance learning.

As well as offering lots of tips for speechwriters, screenwriters and playwrights, you'll be sure to get some ideas and exercise you can adapt for home schooling.

There will be a chance to ask Scott questions, and, after the hour, those who wish to do some networking with other members of the audience can do so.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/how-to-write-speeches-like-shakespeare-tickets-138766051997

I’ll be visiting my friend Brian Chalk at Manhattan College.

Founded in 1987, The Shakespeare Guild is a global not-for-profit corporation that celebrates, and endeavors to cultivate larger and more appreciative audiences for, the dramatist who has been applauded in every society as history’s most reliable guide to the mileposts of life.

Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA) Founding Artistic Director Jeffrey Horowitz hosts an online conversation with me, Emma Smith (This is Shakespeare), and James Shapiro (Shakespeare in a Divided America) about our recent books.

 2:00 PM EDT (1:00 PM CDT and 7:00PM BDT)

https://www.tfana.org/current-season/digital-programming/shakespeare-scholar-conversation

novel has had to cancel this event, rightly, if sadly. Stay tuned for a virtual alternative . . .