Gregory Doran: ‘Shakespeare will last a great deal longer than the culture wars’
Gender fluidity and climate change are not the hot-button topics you’d expect from an author writing more than 400 years ago.
But it’s Shakespeare‘s “contemporary” outlook that means he will “last a great deal longer than the culture wars,” according to Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) artistic director emeritus Gregory Doran.
While parts of the Bard’s texts recently got banned in some US schools due to their sexual content, Doran tells Sky News: “He’s robust, he will always be there. Those plays will always be there.
“If that one single book has lasted 400 years, he is going to survive a few people taking offence.”
And as for trigger warnings – a modern addition to any potentially distressing content an audience might encounter – he finds “the hypersensitivity absurd”.
Doran, who alongside Dame Judi Dench has written the introduction to a new edition of Shakespeare’s complete plays marking the quarter centenary of their original publication, says it’s an “honour” to be involved with the First Folio, which is now considered one of the most influential books in history.
Without it some of Shakespeare’s most famous plays – including Macbeth and Twelfth Night, along with its much-quoted All The World’s A Stage speech – would have been lost to history.
While 750 copies were published originally, there are now only 235 copies known to remain – with just 50 of those in the UK.
In 2020, a copy was sold for over £8m, making it the most expensive work of literature ever to appear at auction.
Doran and David Tennant rehearsing Richard II in 2013. Pic: Kwame Lestrade (c) RSC
Shakespeare is a ‘magnet’ for current obsessions
Doran – who has directed or produced every one of the First Folio plays – says while he didn’t set out to work through them all, he did decide not to repeat plays (although he relaxed his self-imposed rule for a Japanese language version of Merchant Of Venice performed in Tokyo, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which he first worked on early in his career, and later revisited).
While he has directed and produced work outside of Shakespeare – including contemporary plays and musicals – he admits “Shakespeare has been the spine of my career.”
It seems once the Bard bug has bitten, it’s hard to tear yourself away.
Because once you work with Shakespeare’s texts as a director, Doran thinks other playwrights struggle to live up to his example.
He adds: “Every play takes you to a different world.
“Shakespeare is like a magnet that attracts all the iron filings of what’s going on in the world… contemporary issues or themes or obsessions.”
He recalls a line in Cymbeline, where the heroine of the play, Imogen – while dressed as a boy – meets a group of young men and says to the audience: “I’d change my sex to be companion with them.”
Doran explains: “The concept of your sex not being a single constant thing, but something that you – even if you can’t – would have the desire to change, that Shakespeare expresses it 400 years ago, it’s just not what I was expected to read.
“In a world of constant conversations about gender fluidity and non-binary, suddenly Shakespeare is articulating this young woman’s desire to try out another gender. And I just find that astonishing.”
Doran also flags Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, who gives a speech on climate change.
He says: “Everyone thinks A Midsummer Night’s Dream [happens] on a lovely summer’s evening, but it’s all taking place in the rain. And [Titania] says this is our fault that the weather is changing. She says: ‘The seasons alter.’
“It’s just so surprising to hear something so contemporary.”
Arthur Hughes in Richard III, 2022. Pic: Ellie Kurttz (c) RSC
Trigger warnings about balloons ‘absurd’
Far from a text purist (his 1999 RSC production of Macbeth worked in jokes about Tony Blair) Doran does believe updates should be handled with care – and he certainly isn’t a fan of recent bans on Shakespeare at schools in Flordia.
He says: “You can cut [Shakespeare] in performance. So, if there’s a bit you don’t want to deal with, then don’t deal with it, it’s fine.
“But I would say that certainly students should be given access to the whole thing and the context in which it was written, which is 400 years ago. And attitudes have changed.”
While society has evolved since Shakespeare’s days, Doran’s not a fan of the relatively modern phenomenon of trigger warnings, saying: “I sometimes find the hypersensitivity [around them] absurd.”
Referring to his 2022 production of Richard III, which had a balloon popping in the first soliloquy, he says: “We all have a reaction when someone has a balloon, you kind of cringe waiting for it to pop, but that doesn’t need a trigger warning.
“And in fact, if you’re given a trigger warning, then the danger is that people are not listening to what the rest of the play is because they’re anticipating something they’ve been told is going to happen.
“It’s an absurd thing to say, ‘There are latex balloons in this production,’ when you could also say, and children are murdered, or people are abused and killed [in this play].
“But that’s also a spoiler, you don’t want to hear about that to begin with.”
From actions on stage to behaviour off of it, Doran is aghast at the idea of an audience code of conduct, saying such a list of stipulations would signal “too much of a nanny state”.
He goes on: “I know actors who if the audience are coughing they get furious, and other actors who say, they’re coughing because they’re bored.
“So coughing is very difficult, but I’m not sure that putting in the programme ‘don’t cough’ actually helps them not cough, you know?”
Doran says actors and fellow audience members should be able to keep any poor behaviour in check.
“Any audience is a live thing, and as an actor, you have to be in control of that,” he says.
“Like any good stand-up comedian knows how to, if there’s a rowdy section, then you’ve got some put-downs of those heckles and you get them onside.
“There are other ways of heckling, one of which is to direct the line directly at the noisy person or the person who’s on their phone… They can suddenly realise, because there are sometimes young people who think they’re in front of a television screen.”
Doran and the then Prince Charles viewing the RSC costume store in 2020. Pic: Jacob King
Shakespeare would have ‘shrugged off’ his national poet title
A director known for his progressive attitude towards diverse casting during his decade in the RSC’s top job, he acknowledges not all sections of the viewing public were fans of his approach.
His RSC firsts include an all-female director season, a gender-balanced cast for a production of Troilus And Cressida and hiring the company’s first disabled actor in the role of Richard II.
Doran says he was not surprised by the backlash some of his choices attracted, saying: “The point is not to provoke, but provocation isn’t a bad thing.
“We fetishise Shakespeare.
“We can regard Shakespeare as being the upholder of a particular kind of national sense of identity or spirit.
“I think Shakespeare would have shrugged off any such kind of attribution.”
Some might question whether it’s problematic to centre a white, male perspective and say it speaks for everyone.
But the problems occur, Doran says, when we try to fit Shakespeare and his work into boxes that don’t necessarily fit.
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He says: “In the 18th Century, there was a huge effort to make Shakespeare – and it continues to this day – the great national poet, the speaker of empire, as it were.
“And if you’re doing that, then you have to erase the bits where maybe there is homosexual desire. We can’t have that, so we’ll write it out.”
He flags that of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets, 126 of them are from a man, addressed to another man.
Doran goes on: “In the 19th Century… there was an absolutely identifiable process of the heterosexualisation of the sonnets.
“So, the pronouns were changed, because we couldn’t, if we were having Shakespeare as our national poet, we couldn’t have him being gay.
“We all make Shakespeare in our own image… Or if you don’t like Shakespeare, you point to the bits that are difficult and may be misogynist or racist or appear to be so, and we hold those up as reasons why we should no longer study it.
“He’ll last a great deal longer than the culture wars.”
William Shakespeare’s The Complete Plays will be published by The Folio Society on Tuesday, and My Shakespeare: A Director’s Journey Through the First Folio by Greg Doran is out now.
Entertainment
BAFTA Games Awards: Astro Bot tops leaderboard – with psychological horror close behind
Astro Bot was the big winner at this year’s BAFTA Games Awards, taking home five prizes, including the coveted best game.
The 3D platformer, which was launched to critical acclaim in September to mark PlayStation’s 30th anniversary, was nominated for eight gongs, while Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, led with 11 nods.
But in the end, the critics – some of whom had dubbed Astro Bot a “perfect game” – were right as it dominated the awards at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, hosted by comedian Phil Wang for the second year running.
Astro Bot. Pic: Team Asobi
Nicolas Doucet with his five awards for Astro Bot. Pic: PA
BAFTAs for audio achievement, game design, animation, and best family game completed the set for developers Team Asobi, who designed multiple galaxies and dozens of levels for the titular Astro to journey through, retrieving spaceship parts and rescuing lost robots.
“We’re a team based in Japan, but we have over 12 nationalities. We really mix it up and get ideas from everyone,” Nicolas Doucet, president of Team Asobi, told Sky News.
“We do a lot of jokes in the game, but the joke has a different meaning depending on where you are in the world. So it’s really, really nice to go around and ask everyone ‘is that joke fine in your country?’ And then together we come to a kind of universal playfulness.”
Among the gongs for Astro Bot was the best game award. Pic: BAFTA
It’s a very different atmosphere than that generated by British psychological horror Still Wakes The Deep, which won three awards for best new intellectual property and best supporting and leading roles.
Compared to John Carpenter’s 1980 sci-fi horror The Thing but on a Scottish oil rig, the game sees players take on the role of an electrician trapped on a damaged facility while being pursued by monsters.
Still Wakes The Deep. Pic: Sumo Digital Limited
Developer The Chinese Room has been praised for using home-grown talent to voice the characters, including comedian and actress Karen Dunbar, who picked up best performer in a supporting role for voicing Finlay.
“I’ve been nominated for quite a few BAFTAs in my time in Scotland, and I’ve never won one,” said Dunbar.
“It was such a great category, so many great performances. When they shouted my name, I think I started clapping for someone else!”
Read more: See full list of winners
Still Wakes The Deep star Karen Dunbar won best performer in a supporting role. Pic: BAFTA
Meanwhile, best multiplayer game went to Helldivers II – a satirical, sci-fi shooter that sees players fight bugs, aliens and robots with the gumption and gullibility of the characters in Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers.
It has gained a cult following since launching in February 2024 with so much initial interest it created server problems.
“Games for me are about connecting people and forging those bonds of friendship and the multiplayer award is exactly what it stands for,” said Johan Pilestedt, chief executive of Arrowhead Game Studios.
Helldivers II. Pic: Arrowhead/Sony
From outer space to a fictional Yorkshire town called Barnsworth. Thank Goodness You’re Here! – a cartoonish, comedy platformer – won Best British Game. Like Still Wakes The Deep, it has won praise for the authenticity of its actors and setting.
“I think it’s been a real privilege to be able to represent Barnsley on the silver screen,” said Will Todd, who is from the town and one of two game designers behind the project.
Thank Goodness You’re Here! Pic: Coal Supper/Panic Inc
Co-creator James Carbutt added: “Me and Will wrote everything in our tone of voice, quite literally. The further along development we got, the more we lent into it. I think the voices from different parts of the UK and different voices in gaming are super important, and hopefully we’re one of them.”
By the time the BAFTAs wrapped up, Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II was only handed one of the 11 BAFTAs it was nominated for, technical achievement.
Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II. Pic: Ninja Theory
But developers Ninja Theory are already adding this year’s win to a tally of five BAFTAs they were awarded for the first game in the series, which created a protagonist with psychosis by drawing on clinical neuroscience and the experiences of people living with the condition.
Blondie drummer Clem Burke has died at the age of 70
The band said Blurke had been diagnosed with cancer, and described his death as a “profound loss”.
He featured on all the Debbie Harry-fronted group’s studio albums since joining a year after their formation in 1975.
Blurke was with the band from their self-titled debut, through their 1978 classic Parallel Lines, to 2017’s Pollinator.
Drummer Burke.
Pic: Reuters
In a statement on Blondie’s Instagram, Harry and the band’s guitarist, Chris Stein, said: “It is with profound sadness that we relay news of the passing of our beloved friend and bandmate Clem Burke following a private battle with cancer.
“Clem was not just a drummer, he was the heartbeat of Blondie.
“His talent, energy, and passion for music were unmatched, and his contributions to our sound and success are immeasurable.
“Beyond his musicianship, Clem was a source of inspiration both on and off the stage. His vibrant spirit, infectious enthusiasm and rock solid work ethic touched everyone who had the privilege of knowing him.
“Clem’s influence extended far beyond Blondie, a self-proclaimed ‘rock and roll survivalist’, he played and collaborated with numerous iconic artists.”
Burke in his performance at Festival Estereo Picnic 2023.
Pic: AP
Burke featured on Iggy Pop’s 1982 album Zombie Birdhouse and also performed with Bob Dylan, The Ramones, The Who guitarist Pete Townshend and Joan Jett.
The statement went on to say Burke had left an “indelible mark on every project he was part of”.
It added: “We extend our deepest condolences to Clem’s family, friends, and fans around the world. His legacy will live on through the tremendous amount of music he created and the countless lives he touched.”
Burke, who performed on classic tracks such as Call Me, Heart Of Glass and One Way Or Another, made his final live appearance with Blondie last year.
Read more from Sky News:
King arrives in Rome for Italy tour with Queen after health concerns
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Blondie performing during Glastonbury Festival in 2023.
Pic: Invision/AP
Among those paying tribute to him was Kinks guitarist Dave Davies, who said: “I feel saddened that Clem Burke was taken from us so soon.
“May he rest in peace, spectacular drumming, we were friends.”
Nancy Sinatra said: “My heart is shattered. Clem became an icon as a member of Blondie, but he was also an important part of my band, the K.A.B. I was blessed to call him my friend.
“If I ever needed him, he was there. Always. Sending healing prayers and comfort to his widow, Ellen, his family, and all who loved him.”
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