Transcript
What inspires you from WFSU Public Media? Here's this week's Voices That Inspire. Hello, my name is Phil Kretten. I work the Southern Shakespeare Company. I appear in schools as Shakespeare men and I direct for the Bargains and Junior Company. I was very lucky. I felt like Shakespeare, and my life as a series of happy circumstances. I was in a play called Alice in Wonderland. My parents came to see it back in South London when I grew up and when at last we found something that Phil can do, he can act a little bit. They decided to send me to Italian Conti Drama School in Clapham, South London, where the very first play that I studied with them was Julius Caesar. So I came across Shakespeare, not in an English lesson, but as a playwright. And I had his wooden sword and was wearing his cardboard helmet. I think, and this is great. This is one of those people again stabbed and there's talk about lions and all this stuff. And I just was completely enthralled but I didn't understand the political maneuverings in ancient Mediterranean. Nothing to do with me at all. But I just knew I loved putting this white sheet on and was really enjoying being somebody else. Shakespeare didn't write books. The one big thing I try and get across to all my lessons is that Shakespeare wrote plays. He wrote lines for actors to bring to life. And if you read Shakespeare as a book, it can seem incredibly dull. But what you need to do is to see it performed or better still performing yourself. So if you read the opening scene of the witches, for instance, it's Wenzhel Wee, three-meetig, and thunder lightning or in rain when the Hurley Burley is when, oh, I don't understand. When the Hurley Burley was, I don't understand this. But when you get people actually performing it and you have three students out in front of the class, it becomes interesting and it becomes alive. My job really is to try and get the children to realize that he isn't a dull, dead author, that this man can inspire, can lead children to amazing plots and wonderful poetry. My name is Phil Crocketton. Thank you for listening and remember, where there's a will, there's a play. You're listening to voices that inspire.