In June of 2010, I traveled to the campus of the University of Mississippi to give the Gertrude Ford Symposium Lecture. My topic was "The Many Faces of Falstaff," in conjunction with the Oxford Shakespeare Festival's summer production of The Merry Wives of Windsor, directed by Dex Edwards. I really owe this opportunity to the recommendation of my brilliant mentor and friend, Dr. Felicia Hardison Londré, Curators' Professor of Theatre at UMKC.
Unfortunately, my tight schedule prevented me from attending the production, but I did get to attend a fabulous dress rehearsal for another Oxford Shakespeare Festival production of The King and I on the Ole Miss campus.
Here are some wonderful photos of the production of The Merry Wives of Windsor. The third festival production was Hamlet, which many cast and crew members of the other two productions were involved in as well.
We had a full house for my presentation, which was very
well received by the cast and crew of the Oxford Shakespeare Festival, as well
as several fans and community supporters who attended it.
The second time around, I
reworked the presentation I had given on the previous summer to polish it up,
and added in a section on Falstaff as he appears in operas and musical theatre.
I thought this would be particularly interesting to some of the attendees,
since the Theatre Department at Ole Miss offers an emphasis in Musical Theatre.
I ended up with a presentation that included over 400
slides! Below, you can see the new information on Falstaff in opera and musical
theatre that I included in the handout for the attendees at the lecture.
