The Saturday Shakespeare Club, with the Shakespeare Workshop at UC Santa Cruz, plans five weekly meetings on Pericles, via Zoom beginning Jan. 20.
Each Saturday session lasts from 10 a.m. to noon, and usually includes a talk of about 45 minutes by an expert on Shakespeare followed by a reading aloud of a section of the text.
In the past “Pericles” was rarely played, but it is now regarded quite highly. Most scholars accept that the play was co-authored by Shakespeare along with a dramatist and pamphleteer called George Wilkins. Perhaps because of co-authorship, the First Folio of 1623, the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays, did not include it.
The schedule is:
Jan. 20: Introducing the play will be Michael Warren, UCSC Professor of English literature Emeritus, and dramaturg for many Santa Cruz Shakespeare productions. Warren has regularly been the Club’s initial speaker, providing informative and thorough foundation for a play’s understanding.
Jan. 27: Beth Lopes, a freelance theater director and educator based in Los Angeles, will speak. She has directed Pericles for the New Swan Theater at UC Irvine. This past October, Beth spoke to the Saturday Shakespeare Club about her direction of “As You Like It” for the 2023 New Swan Shakespeare Festival—a talk that was received with much enthusiasm.
Feb. 3: A recorded lecture by distinguished Oxford Shakespearean scholar Emma Smith on the First Folio, which was published 400 years ago, seven years after Shakespeare’s death. If not for the First Folio, about half of Shakespeare’s plays would almost certainly have been lost.
Feb. 10: Julia Reinhard Lupton, a distinguished professor of English at UC Irvine and co-director of the New Swan Shakespeare Center, which partners with UCSC’s Shakespeare Workshop.
Feb. 17: Viewing a DVD screening of the Stratford Festival Production of “The Adventures of Pericles.”
There is no charge, but members are asked to contribute to Santa Cruz Shakespeare with a check, payable to Santa Cruz Shakespeare, to: Santa Cruz Shakespeare, 501 Upper Park Road, Santa Cruz, CA 95065. Or give at https://santacruzshakespeare.org/
•••
For Zoom link, email [email protected].