Stream Curt L. Tofteland and Paul Reichstein's session at the 2022 Bell Shakespeare National Teacher Conference with the Teacher Membership.
Runtime: 17 mins
All children are born innocent and uncorrupted, but some children are born into environments that are guilty and corrupt. As children age, they are shaped by the values of their birth environment, becoming mirrors of their childhood experiences. Penitentiaries, jails, and detention centres can be a dumping ground for, and epicentre of, trauma and hurt in our world. For children who find themselves contained within the boundaries of institutional correction, their innate goodness lives within them. Space must be created for that goodness to be called forth.
Shakespeare Behind Bars was founded to assist the incarcerated in finding their authentic voices through an immersive experience in Shakespeare’s original language, complex themes, and multiple meanings. Shakespeare Behind Bars is an inclusive organization that proactively enlists intentional strategies to remove barriers to access, participation, and the success of those who were historically or are currently systematically excluded or marginalized.
Curt L. Tofteland is interviewed by Bell Shakespeare artist and collaborator Paul Reichstein, to discuss his practice, process and discoveries across his career and his latest work. Tofteland will share how he engages Shakespeare’s plays with questions that reflect our priorities, confusions, uncertainties, and urgent concerns. He will discuss how and why he does not foist on marginalized communities the host of negative western values that have accumulated around Shakespeare. He will share how he produces Shakespeare that is fully alive in this present moment and rich in meaning for ourselves and our contemporary audiences. In this powerful talk, Tofteland will speak to how each day in the Shakespeare Behind Bars program, participants and facilitators ask “Why Shakespeare now?”
