QUERY: "Dear Sir: I have an interest in adapting Sir Ian McKellen's script Acting Shakespeare for performance. Might the rights be available? Respectfully, James D."
REPLY: "James, Ian McKellen is happy for you to perform your version of Acting Shakespeare. All best wishes. Louise H., Secretary to Sir Ian McKellen. Dec. 2006"
. . .
In Acting Shakespeare began with the above correspondence regarding Sir Ian McKellen's one-man show, Acting Shakespeare, an amalgam of personal reminiscences, theatrical lore and selections from Shakespeare. I had very little expectation of an actual reply, so I was thrilled when I received Mr. McKellen's blessing to move forward with the idea.
The original concept for the adaptation was to re-create McKellen's show (which I had seen him perform in 1983), as well as pay tribute to him and his work. This idea, however, was short-lived. Performing another actor's one-man show proved detached and impersonal — a clever trick rather than a play. After the third draft, I abandoned the idea. What followed was a complete re-imagining, two years of research and revisions, and eleven more drafts.
I began by replacing the Shakespeare selections with ones which spoke deeply to me, expanding on the theme of Shakespeare's childhood, and incorporating contemporaries who had actually known him or had worked with him.
Still, with each new draft, the director, John Langs, kept encouraging me to push myself to make the play more personal, and not hide behind the mask of McKellen's play. I began to substitute more of my own personal experiences in acting Shakespeare for those of McKellen's, and that was when the story became its own play.
Some of Mr. McKellen's structure and wonderful writings remain, but what rose to the surface with each succeeding draft was less and less a re-creation of the original show, and more a story about one person's journey towards meeting Shakespeare and discovering the beauty of words — and their potential — which began one night twenty-five years ago when I watched, with more than a little awe, Sir Ian McKellen in Acting Shakespeare.
In Acting Shakespeare was originally produced by American Players Theater.
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