WIll in the Ville

Festivities embracing all things Shakespeare have peppered Louisville since the April kickoff of "Will in the Ville", a local homage to the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death that will culminate with a special exhibit opening at the Frazier History Museum of the Bard’s first folio.

In October, the festivities switch into high gear leading up to the Nov. 10 opening of the exhibit with performances from Actors Theatre of Louisville, The Alley Theater, Kentucky Shakespeare, Louisville Orchestra, Savage Rose Theatre Company, the U of L’s Theatre Arts Department and other groups along with lectures, special classes and other activities.

What makes the first folio – published in 1623 just seven years after Shakespeare’s death – so important is not just the 36 plays it contains. It holds significance because 18 had never been printed before. “As You Like It,” “Julius Caesar,” “Macbeth,” “The Taming of the Shrew,” “The Tempest” and “Twelfth Night,” are among them.

The push to put the first folio on tour during 2016 came from the Washington, D.C.-based Folger Library Collection, the world’s largest Shakespeare collection. The plan is to have the first folio on exhibit in one city in each of the 50 states, but each host city had to apply to the Folger to get the folio. Many, like Louisville, have created custom events that reflect their own cultures, such as New Orleans’ jazz funeral for Shakespeare.

Louisville’s three hosting organizations – the museum, U of L and the library – began working on the current festivities after their application got the green light in early 2015. The goal, said U of L professor English Department Vice Chair Andrew Rabin, was to ensure that events included “as many cross-organization collaborations as possible.”

What organizers got was more than 50 arts, cultural and educational organizations hosting events, Rabin added.

Those include likely suspects such as Actors Theatre of Louisville and Kentucky Shakespeare. Actors recently opened its production of “Macbeth,” directed by artistic director Les Waters. Kentucky Shakespeare took on more than its regular summer season. During a weekend in September, the company performed “The Shakespearean Baseball Game: A Comedy of Errors, Hits and Runs” at the Louisville Slugger Museum. The production used lines from some of Shakespeare’s most famous plays to hit on a baseball theme.

While many arts and cultural organizations have staged events, the festivities also have included talks and special classes at the Louisville Free Public Library.

One of the biggest upcoming highlights is the Nov. 17 talk by Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro. The Columbia University professor of English and Comparative Literature has written “A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599,” “Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?” and his new book, “1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of Lear.” He also is working on the forthcoming “Shakespeare in America.”

His research has prompted him to find out the influence that Shakespeare’s works had on some of America’s leaders, including Kentucky-born Abraham Lincoln. In an interview from New York, Shapiro called Lincoln, who often wrote about and quoted Shakespeare, “the greatest reader of Shakespeare in this country’s history.”

At the center of all of the fanfare is the first folio, which will be displayed in a sealed box and its own room at the Frazier History Museum turned the “Hamlet,” where the protagonist gives the famous “To, be or not to be…” soliloquy. Nearby will be a dozen panels that highlight Shakespeare’s cultural influence.

An adjacent room will be a display subsequent folios of Shakespeare’s works that are also part of the U of L archives.

U of L’s Rabin called the partnerships formed to produce a range of events for Will in the Ville “phenomenal.”

“This helps demonstrate the importance of arts and humanities to the cultural life of a city,” he said.