0:15

Pushkin. Hey,

0:18

Loudest Girl listeners, Lauren, Here,

0:21

I'm dropping into your feeds to share

0:23

something special. This week, Where

0:25

There's a Will searches for the surprising

0:28

places William Shakespeare shows

0:31

up outside the theater. Host

0:33

Barry Edelstein, artistic director

0:36

of one of the country's leading Shakespeare

0:38

theaters, asks what it is

0:41

about Shakespeare that's given him a continuous

0:44

afterlife In all sorts of unexpected

0:46

ways. You'll hear Shakespeare

0:48

doing rehabilitative work in a maximum

0:51

security prison, in the mouth

0:53

of US presidents, and even

0:55

at the center of a deadly riot

0:57

in New York City. Join

1:00

Barry as he uncovers the many

1:02

ways Shakespeare endures in

1:04

our modern society and

1:06

what that says about us. In

1:08

the previ you you're about to hear Barry

1:11

meets children with a very special

1:13

relationship to the Bard, autistic

1:15

kids who discover ways

1:17

to express themselves through a writer

1:20

from four hundred years ago. Okay,

1:23

here comes the preview. You can hear more

1:25

episodes of Where There's a Will

1:27

wherever you get your podcasts. It's

1:31

a Saturday morning at the Old Globe. I'm

1:33

here to meet Declin. I am a little

1:36

nervous, but I'm generally feeling good. Okay,

1:38

good, Well, we're going to get the nerves to go away.

1:40

In a second. Declin's fifteen,

1:42

and he had a late night. There was a school

1:45

dance. I didn't do much dancing,

1:48

per se. I mean, I hope this isn't too controversial,

1:50

but I'm not really a big fan of most of the music

1:53

that they play at high school dances Saturdays, and

1:56

it's always the same things, Like, could they at

1:58

least not play different bad music this time?

2:01

I wonder. I

2:03

know Decklin because he spent the summer enrolled

2:05

in a program that the Old Globe runs for teens

2:08

who want to learn about acting, theater,

2:11

and specifically Shakespeare. Declin

2:14

loves Shakespeare, I mean loves

2:16

him. So I

2:19

had my first encounter with Shakespeare,

2:21

or my first shakespeareance, if you will,

2:24

that I can remember when I was twelve. That

2:27

shakespeareance was when Decklin

2:29

performed in a student production of the Winter's Tale,

2:31

one of Shakespeare's last and most

2:33

moving plays. So I

2:36

played Autolicus. Autolocus

2:39

is the comic lead. He's this small

2:41

time thief who wears disguises

2:43

and runs schemes and even sings

2:45

a little, and so we had the two weeks

2:48

to kind of schlock

2:50

together a play and

2:53

with language that I had never encountered,

2:55

and that was really fascinating, quite difficult, but

2:58

I really enjoyed it, and Atolicus

3:02

was like a very fun character. And it

3:04

came to the performance and we were outside

3:06

and I was hot and sweaty and bellowing

3:08

outlines I had no idea

3:10

if the audience could understand. And

3:12

I loved it. So that was my

3:14

first encounter with Shakespeare. Yeah,

3:17

how would you characterize what excited

3:20

you about it when you were playing Autolicus? Shakespeare

3:22

is just very unique, and

3:24

like, I can't really draw a comparison

3:27

between working on his works and the works of

3:30

any other writer, or

3:32

genre or anything. So

3:35

I may not even really have the words to describe

3:37

working on Shakespeare. And that might be what

3:40

I love about it, Declin protests

3:42

too much, he really does have

3:44

the words to describe it. It also

3:46

connects to more largely what excites

3:49

me in life and what I want to do with my life, which is leader

3:51

creativity. But also, like Shakespeare

3:54

is inescapable. You find it literally

3:57

etched at the foots of statues.

3:59

You see it quoted at weddings,

4:02

you see it on stages everywhere. Pretty

4:04

much every respectable Viada

4:07

is like performing at least one Shakespeare play

4:09

a season. And I wouldn't

4:11

say that it's just a big thing

4:13

for me. I mean it's a big thing for everyone.

4:15

It has to be. You can't escape it, and who

4:18

would want to. How does it make you feel when

4:20

you're a private moment, sitting alone

4:22

in your bedroom, sitting outside

4:24

in a garden, leafing through

4:27

some sonnet or something

4:29

like that, What happens to you? I

4:31

mean it depends. There are certainly a lot of passages

4:34

that you know kind of I mean, they all

4:36

kind of filled me with awe. But there are different

4:39

strains of awe. I mean, sometimes

4:41

it's comedy, but even those, oh

4:43

it is, it's just so impressive. And often

4:46

even when it seems like a glib joke, it's

4:48

usually saying something quite deep. Different

4:51

strains of awe. I love

4:53

that when I hear Declin

4:55

at the ripe age of fifteen talk

4:57

about Shakespeare like that. I remember

5:00

a line from the Merchant of Venice, I

5:02

never knew so young a body with

5:05

so old a head. But

5:07

Declin's not the only teen with a deep

5:09

connection to Shakespeare. There's something

5:11

about this writer that speaks really

5:13

powerfully magically, even

5:16

to young people. I'm

5:20

Barry Edelstein, and I run the Old Globe

5:22

in San Diego, one of the countries leading

5:24

Shakespeare theaters, and this is where there's

5:26

a will finding Shakespeare from the

5:29

Globe and Pushkin industries. Our

5:31

show discovers Shakespeare in all sorts

5:33

of unexpected places and asks what

5:35

he's doing there and what his presence

5:37

means about him and about us.

5:40

My companion on this search for Old

5:42

William is a friend and colleague

5:45

with their own deep interest in Shakespeare. A

5:47

writer and director who works on stage, screen

5:49

and TV. M weinstein him,

5:52

Hi Berry. It's so fun listening

5:54

to Decklin. He's an amazing guy.

5:57

I was about his age when I first discovered Shakespeare,

5:59

but I was way way less

6:02

articulate about why I love the stuff. Well,

6:04

I'm not sure I'm ready to believe that, Barry, but yes,

6:06

Decklin is remarkable, though I must say I'm

6:08

not entirely surprised. I've done a lot of work

6:11

on Shakespeare with young people, and the way they deal

6:13

with them kind of blows me away. Always

6:15

I couldn't agree more because the work

6:17

the Globe does with teens is some of the stuff

6:20

I love the most. Anyway, It's the

6:22

stuff that delights me the most. Like,

6:24

I asked Declan what he thought it was about Shakespeare

6:26

that moved him, So just listen to his answer.

6:29

Can you talk a little bit about what

6:31

the language of Shakespeare, in the text of Shakespeare's

6:34

doing that engages

6:36

you and moves you? Well, you

6:39

have some with you. I have my

6:42

script from Henry

6:45

five. Lay it on me and here

6:47

can I took a minute, took up my ducks in a row. Yes,

6:49

sir, do you have a passage you want to share? I'm

6:52

not sure. I've been so busy. I didn't have a terrible

6:54

amount of time to prepare for this, But I suppose

6:56

it was just because I was. I was reading it earlier and thinking

6:58

about it. The passage that I auditioned

7:01

with was monologue from Act

7:04

two, Scene two of Right

7:06

of Henry the Fifth, when

7:10

Henry five is essentially chewing

7:12

out Cambridge, scruping Gray for betraying

7:14

him. And it's

7:16

just a really powerful

7:21

passage that spoke to me. Um, should

7:23

I like read that? Yeah? Read some of it? Um? If

7:26

you don't mind, see

7:28

you these English monsters,

7:31

My Lord of Cambridge, here, this

7:33

man, and this night for a few

7:35

light crowns lightly conspired

7:38

and sworn unto the practices of

7:40

France, to kill us here

7:42

in Hampton. Oh

7:45

thou hast infected the sweetness

7:48

of friendship? Seem

7:50

men dutiful? Why

7:53

so Didst Thou seem

7:55

they grave and learned? Why

7:58

so Didst Thou come

8:00

they of noble family? Why

8:03

so Didst Thou seemed

8:05

they religious? Why

8:07

so Didst Thou oh arrest

8:10

them to the answer of the law, and

8:12

God acquit them of their practices?

8:17

Wow, bravo, thank oh,

8:19

my goodness. Declin

8:30

is just great. What a wonderful reading

8:32

of Henry. He'll play it for real at some

8:34

point. I'm sure Declin reminds me of so

8:36

many of the teams I've done Shakespeare with. During

8:39

the pandemic, I spent six weeks working

8:41

with a group of twenty three teenagers

8:43

to reimagine Romeo and Juliet. I

8:46

was scheduled to direct the play in person, and

8:48

then when the world shut down, we pivoted

8:50

to zoom and we made the sort of hybrid

8:53

theater video digital production and

8:55

curing the show in the mouths of young people

8:58

in lockdown and isolated from their friends,

9:00

watching the world crumble around them was

9:03

truly humbling. They found so

9:05

much humor in moments I never realized

9:07

were funny, and they were so angry at the

9:09

failures of the adults in the play, just

9:11

as angry as they were with the adults failing

9:14

them during COVID. I realize

9:16

that Shakespeare is so powerful

9:18

for teenagers because adolescence

9:21

is really when society teaches us to not

9:23

express that kind of anger, to not speak up,

9:26

to not express our feelings, to

9:28

suppress who we are, and Shakespeare's

9:31

characters never do that. Like

9:33

Romeo, he cries out, I

9:36

defy you stars, he

9:38

just rails at the injustice

9:40

of the universe. Exactly when

9:42

you're Romeo's age, You don't hold anything

9:44

in. You say what you feel, even

9:46

if it's uncomfortable or gnarlier.

9:49

It's difficult to hear. For me when I

9:51

was a teen and for the teens I worked with, Shakespeare's

9:53

a sort of beautiful remedy. Society

9:55

wants us to sit down and shut up,

9:57

but Shakespeare demands the exact

10:00

opposite. We think about Shakespeare

10:02

being forced on teens

10:04

in school, all dreary and boring

10:07

in some English class to be suffered through. But

10:09

Declin and I think the kids you worked

10:12

with have found a way to love him on

10:14

their own terms. The summer

10:16

Shakespeare program that Declin was in at the Globe

10:18

had about twenty other kids in it. They

10:21

made their own production of Henry

10:23

the Fifth, not just with the Shakespeare

10:25

text, but with their own writing too.

10:27

Some of them composed music, some choreographed

10:30

dance and movement. It was amazing.

10:33

We'll hear about it, and we'll hear from some of

10:35

the remarkable young people in it. After

10:37

a short break