ACTING SHAKESPEARE: A Roundtable Discussion with Artists from the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s 2018 Production of The Merchant of Venice

Abstract

McPherson: My name is Kate McPherson and I’m one of the Play Seminar Directors here at the festival, so I’m really used to directing audience traffic and discussions. That’s what I do for the seminars, and that’s my role again here today. I’m very happy to introduce to you the actors’ panel. We have Lisa Wolpe, Josh Innerst, Edna Nahshon and Wayne Carr, and there will be plenty of opportunities for you to ask them questions. I think I’m going to kick it off with just one question that I’d like each of them to answer, and then we’ll pitch it out to you. Each of you are playing multiple roles, so when you speak I’ll ask you to say what your roles are. Then you can just talk with us a little bit about something that you really brought to embodying that particular role because we’re really grateful that we have actors here to embody the role. And maybe some great joy you found in that embodiment or some little challenge. And I’ll let you pick rather than say, ‘What was the hard thing you did?’ If there’s something you’re really loving, you can talk about that as well. So we’ll start with Lisa and then go to Wayne.