What are some of the challenges you face in embodying specific actors’ performances playing Shakespearean characters?
Maggor: There are wonderful challenges involved in performing these Shakespearean roles as other actresses have performed them. I am not only performing the character of Juliet, but I am performing Juliet as Ellen Terry may have performed Juliet — which means I have done a lot of research on these actresses as women, as theater artists, and as interpretive artists and looked at their biographies, the way they approached the text, their analysis of these characters. There are so many different ways to think of these different Shakespearean characters. There’s not just one correct way. And that, I think, is one of the very important parts of the show: that you get to see different versions of Hamlet, different versions of Juliet. This piece looks at reclaiming Shakespeare — not as a highbrow author or as a sacred author who has to be protected from ignorant audiences or overbearing actors, but really as a popular playwright. And that’s what these different interpretations show us. How do
