From yesterday's Ann Arbor News:
Patrick Stewart will play the lead in 2 productions at U-M Wednesday, December 7, 2005 BY JENN MCKEE News Arts Writer
Santa Claus isn't the only one coming to town.
The University Musical Society announced today that the world-famous Royal Shakespeare Company will return to the University of Michigan for a much-anticipated third residency in the fall of 2006.
An ensemble cast will stage three Shakespeare plays - "Julius Caesar,'' "Antony and Cleopatra'' and "The Tempest'' - with seven performances each at the Power Center in October and November. The shows will be U.S. exclusives, and renowned stage actor and "Star Trek: Next Generation'' star Patrick Stewart will play the lead role in the latter two productions (Antony and Prospero).
This should be welcome news for those who were disappointed - after the RSC's U-M residencies in 2001 and 2003 - that the third planned visit didn't happen this year.
"Michael Boyd, the person with whom we have the most deep, long-standing relationship with the RSC, is now in charge (as artistic director),'' UMS President Ken Fischer said. "We felt it was really important that we be able to deal with Michael directly - the person that understood us better than any other.''
UMS - an independent, nonprofit performing-arts presenter housed at U-M - aspires to re-create the magic of the first RSC residency, which showcased history plays directed by Boyd.
Ralph Williams, a professor in the U-M Department of English Literature and Language who has become instrumental in the connection between the company and U-M, said this morning the RSC is "arguably the best classical theater company performing in English'' today.
"What they bring to Ann Arbor is precisely that excellence, that inventiveness in taking classical works and making them fresh and relevant to contemporary times,'' Williams said. "They bring to our students an imagination and an excellence to which they themselves might aspire. The plays they are bringing this time are ones which focus on the deepest problems of social order and personal life.''
Beginning in April, Boyd and the RSC will kick off a year-long Complete Works Festival, which will feature the entire Shakespeare canon - 37 plays, plus sonnets and long poems - at Stratford-on-Avon in England. During this program, the RSC will produce 15 plays itself and bring in theater companies from around the world to perform others.
"Ann Arbor is getting the only work from the Complete Works Festival crossing the Atlantic,'' Boyd said in a prepared statement. "That's a measure of the uniqueness and exclusiveness of this relationship.''
According to Fischer, one of the reasons for the successful partnership between U-M and RSC involves the give and take between the two entities. Williams, for example, has been invited to England five times to work with the RSC.
RSC residencies offer many unique experiences for U-M students and faculty, and the larger Ann Arbor community, including special learning opportunities and interaction with company members. But UMS has also worked to make the partnership mutually beneficial.
"We took a lead in introducing them to a number of other great universities in the United States with distinctive presenting programs - where, in the future, they can consider taking the company on tour,'' said Fischer. "And that meets a real need for them, because they've got to close two of their theaters between '07 and '09.''
Indeed, the company has faced many challenges in the last few years. In 2002, former RSC director Adrian Noble stepped down amid controversy about wilting attendance, staggering debt and no longer staging any RSC shows in London. While Boyd may not have all the problems solved yet, Fischer believes that Boyd is providing the company with a much-needed, imaginative vision for the future.
Said Fischer: "There's so much talk about the depressed economy, the troubled autos (industry), challenges in state funding - and I think it's really fabulous that next fall, when things may be even worse in the state - they're predicted to be - we have, in Michigan, the opportunity to lift up the arts in this way and show the rest of the country we are alive. We've got some real distinction here. It's an exciting time to come to Michigan if you love the arts and you love theater.''
Jenn McKee can be reached at (734) 994-6841 or jmckee@annarbornews.com. News staff reporter Chong Pyen contributed to this report.
The thought of Patrick Stewart - with that voice of his - giving Prospero's lines about breaking his staff and drowning his book of magic - gives me chills up and down my spine.
The other time the Company came to Ann Arbor, I was not able to get tickets. Perhaps this time I will be luckier!
Steven is home from school today. He slept about twenty hours and feels a lot better today, but still has a low grade fever. I am still not feeling all that great, and am getting nothing done other than filling up the bird feeders and taking care of the pets and Steven. Maybe I will feel better after work and can get some things done at home after I get home tonight. Of course, since I will be driving home in half a foot of fresh snow, that might get my adrenaline going. 
The sun actually peeked out this morning, but it is starting to cloud up now in preparation for this afternoon and tonight's snowstorm. 
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