ASU hosts symposium on 'The Color of Shakespeare'

The Shakespeare Cognition Research Project symposium “The Color of Shakespeare: The Oregon Shakespeare Festival at ASU” will be held from 4 to 5:30 p.m., Feb. 2 at the Galvin Playhouse on ASU’s Tempe campus. This event, sponsored by ASU’s Institute for Humanities Research, is free and open to the public.

A multidisciplinary team of scholars from ASU has partnered with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, one of the nation’s oldest and most diverse regional classical theaters, to investigate how audiences respond to actors of color playing Shakespearean roles. 

The symposium will feature talks by Lue Morgan Douthit, the director of Literary Development and Dramaturgy at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF), and Claudia Alick, OSF associate producer. Veteran OSF actors will give an acting demonstration and participate in a panel discussion about playing Shakespeare.

Lue Morgan Douthit holds a master's degree and doctorate in dramatic theory and criticism as well as an MFA in directing/playwriting. She has been with the OSF for 19 seasons and has worked on all kinds of plays, from classical to world premieres. In 1999, she was a co-winner of the LMDA Prize in Dramaturgy: The Elliott Hayes Award for her work on Lorraine Hansberry’s "Les Blancs." This season she will be working on "Animal Crackers" and "Troilus and Cressida."

Alick has taught and guest lectured at universities, theaters, schools and prisons throughout the United States. Named by American Theater Magazine as one of 25 theater artists who will shape American Theater in the next 25 years, Alick has served as the artistic director of Smokin' Word Productions, authored and directed plays staged at The Kennedy Center, and the Hip Hop Theatre Festival, is a member of the award winning NY Neofuturists, and performed on HBO's "Def Poetry Jam."

The Institute for Humanities Research Seed Grant program further advances faculty research and often improves the quality of grant proposals to external funding agencies. The Institute supports those projects that best address its mission and that have strong prospects of receiving external funding.

The Institute for Humanities Research in ASU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences was established in 2005. It has taken the lead in promoting excellence and innovation in humanities scholarship by contributing to scholarly research that addresses socially significant issues and engaging the community. More information is available at http://ihr.asu.edu or 480-965-3000.