Why Shakespeare? Why now?

Each time I count, the list gets longer. There are the four high-profile Broadway productions: Romeo and Juliet, the double bill of Twelfth Night and Richard III (with marvelous Mark Rylance and his all-male Globe Company), and Macbeth (starring Ethan Hawke) at Lincoln Center Theater. There are the additional 12 Off-Broadway productions – notably the all-female Julius Caesar at St. Ann’s Warehouse, Julie Taymor’s spectacular Midsummer Night’s Dream at Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA), and Michael Pennington’s deeply moving King Lear now running at that same theater. If you add the summer’s double-bill at the Delacorte (Shakespeare in the Park) and the three HD Live at the National Broadcasts (Othello, Coriolanus, King Lear), that comes to a whopping 21 productions in New York this season.

It’s an unprecedented number, and it’s generated tremendous excitement, even with the duplications (two Romeo and Juliets, two Twelfth Nights, three Hamlets). Moreover, these productions distinguish themselves with daring choices, to say the least (Orlando Bloom’s Romeo on a motorcycle, the Wooster Group’s Trojans dressed as Native Americans, Macbeth’s witches as hermaphrodites, etc.).

The onslaught shows no sign of letting up. Last week, Classic Stage Company announced that its upcoming season will include Hamlet (starring Peter Sarsgaard), and there are two major films — a Macbeth with Michael Fassbender and Cymbeline with Ethan Hawke — soon to be released. Olivia was right when she said in Twelfth Night: “Most wonderful!”

Happy birthday, Will

Yes, it’s the 450th anniversary of the Bard’s birth — that’s one obvious explanation. But this appears to be more of an organic phenomenon, one that has been creeping up on us. The New York Times reported that the number of Shakespeare productions in New York between 2010 and 2013 is about the same as the entire previous decade. Suddenly, we find ourselves flooded with six Macbeths in three years — a play that has been largely shunned for decades, with only two productions in New York last decade and none in the '90s). And between January and July of this year: four King Lears!

So why Shakespeare, and why now? It’s a question that’s keeping critics at their computers, offering a number of reasons (apart from the obvious — that they are the finest plays written in the English language, both in form and content). Some say that audiences flock to Shakespeare because they are familiar with the plays and are fascinated by the various interpretations (imagine seeing Frank Langella, Michael Pennington, Simon Russell Beale, and John Lithgow each play King Lear, all in a six-month period). Others observe that no other plays improve with repeated viewings like the Bard’s. New York Times critic William Grimes pointed out that America’s love of Shakespeare goes back to the Civil War, a time when 25 percent of plays performed on the East Coast were Shakespeare’s, when his plays were read in every household and taught in every school, and were even performed in the Union Army (starring Ulysses S. Grant as Desdemona, until his Othello complained during rehearsals about Grant’s acting and they found a replacement).

My favorite answer to this rhetorical question? Clearly, Shakespeare attracts the finest theater artists on the English-speaking stage, ones who rise to the Bard’s challenge, muster all their skills and creativity, and take big risks to show us something fresh, vital, and exciting about these 400-year-old texts. Thanks to them, and the theaters whose work they represent this season, we’re seeing Shakespeare’s plays anew.

I had the good fortune of posing the question “Why Shakespeare/Why Now” to five of these fine artists at a panel discussion I moderated for Drama Desk critics in New York this past Friday. They talked about the joys and challenges of working on Shakespeare this season:

Michael Pennington (distinguished British Shakespearean actor, currently playing King Lear): “Shakespeare is the final word on everything. We keep going back to see King Lear because it starts as such a simple, family story. It’s a very physical role — eight performances a week — and I’m never tired. I get tired washing the dishes, or going to the grocery store — but not performing Lear.”

Julie Taymor (award-winning director of Broadway’s Lion King and Spider Man: Turn Off the Dark, of the films Titus and The Tempest, and of A Midsummer Night’s Dream this season): “Shakespeare is the most daring. I don’t think there’s any other writer who shakes you up and questions your morality in the same way. Shakespeare is new for every new generation, and being able to understand the challenge and beauty of Shakespeare through the clarity of great actors and directors is immensely satisfying. I love designing for Shakespeare. All you need is three strokes — like the ones in Japanese paintings depicting a bamboo forest.”

John Glover (stage and screen actor, one of the three witches in Macbeth): “It’s the architecture of Shakespeare’s works. They inform your understanding of drama as no other plays do.”

Scott Shepherd (daring downtown actor, star of Wooster Group's Hamlet and Troilus and Cressida) “You spend your whole life with these plays, and they always tell you something you did not know. If I could go back in a time capsule, I’d choose the year 1600 — because then I could see how Hamlet was meant to be performed.”

Daniel Sullivan (award-winning Broadway and off-Broadway director, and seasonal director at the summer Shakespeare in the Park, including this year’s scintillating Comedy of Errors): “I always feel that Shakespeare tells the truth, in terms of story, character, and structure, and contemporary playwrights have a lot to learn from that. I like working on Shakespeare because contemporary playwrights are never as agreeable to cuts as he is.”

The conversation will continue. Meanwhile these panelists remind us, as artists and as audiences, that a season — let alone a lifetime — isn’t long enough to learn from this timeless playwright.

For Carol Rocamora's thoughts on multiple Macbeths, click here.