We check in with Michael Addison, distinguished Shakespeare actor, director and producer, former artistic director of the California Shakespeare Festival and founder of the Bell Arts Factory.
In 1603 and 1613, the Globe Theater (and other theaters) in London were closed an astonishing 60 percent of the time due to plaque-related quarantines. It is believed that some of Shakespeare's finest works, King Lear among them, were written during these extended periods of isolation. Addison reminiscences about Angus Bowmer, founder of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, which began as an interlude for a boxing match. We talk about John Reed's conflict journalism, and his insights into the miracle and mystery plays of rural Mexico and how you could spot the seeds of what Shakespeare and his contemporaries Philip Marlowe and Ben Jonson turned into great works of art. We talk about the Groundlings and the ladies of the night plying their trade in the audience, of how Shakespeare and his players were the great celebrities of their age. Far from being dusty classics on the shelf, those plays were the pop culture of their day.
Harold Bloom's masterwork, "The Invention of the Human," gets a shout out, as does Bloom as a modern age Falstaff. Addison also talks about the epiphany he had while watching a production of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesmen," as the yarmulke-wearing mourners toss dirt on the grave.
We talk about how astounding it is that so many talented people live in our small town, and the critical mass of creativity it represents - not unlike - albeit on a smaller scale - than the burgeoning artistic culture of Elizabethan England. Addison and Bradigan talk about Kim Maxwell's famous maxim, "The more specific something is, the more it applies to everyone." Michael Chekhov and Marilyn Monroe also get a mention, through the Ojai game, "two degrees of Iris Tree."
In Bradigan's monologue he talks about the six years he spent as a gravedigger and how that relates to Shakespeare's deep humanism.
We do not talk about Trent Reznor, medicinal herbs or Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak.
