If you recently attended Amy's View on Broadway, you would
have found a curious flyer, titled "A Gala Tribute to 'Her
Majesty the Queen,'" with a funny caricature of an Elizabethan
monarch tucked inside your program.
The flyer is an advertisement for a benefit ceremony in which Judi Dench, star of Amy's View and Oscar-winner as QEI in Shakespeare in Love, has been named this year's recipient of the Washington DC Shakespeare Guild's Sir John Gielgud Award for Excellence in the Dramatic Arts.
Dench, whose Shakespeare in Love caricature was drawn by Clive Francis, will receive a trophy called The Golden Quill during an awards ceremony to be held Monday, May 17 at 8 PM at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, 243 West 47th Street in New York. The tribute will be followed by a benefit event and reception at the Supper Club, 240 West 47th Street.
The benefit evening has been titled "A Night for the Love of Shakespeare." It will include remarks, vignettes and remembrances from actress Zoe Caldwell, director Sir Richard Eyre, playwright David Hare, actor Sir Derek Jacobi, and actor Christopher Plummer, all of whom will salute the British actress. Author and television anchor Robert MacNeil will emcee. Death of a Salesman star Brian Dennehy and Shakespeare in Love co-star Gwyneth Paltrow have also been invited and are expected to make an appearance.
HOW DOES THIS AFFECT ME?
You pay your money, you see your stars.
This year is the first time the DC-based Shakespeare Guild will hold its annual Gielgud ceremonies in New York. Each spring the Guild normally holds its ceremonies at the Folger Shakespeare Library in the nation's capital. The Gielgud Award is given to an actor deemed by a selection committee to be "an exemplar of the classical tradition in the interpretation of Shakespeare and his fellow playwrights."
Though it was established in 1994, it wasn't until 1996 when the Guild started presenting the Gielgud Award. The first trophy was given to Sir Ian McKellen. Sir Derek Jacobi got it in 1997, and Zoe Caldwell in 1998. The trophy was designed by sculptor John Safer.
In addition to the Gielgud Award, the Shakespeare Guild sponsors a number of theater-related programs, weekend-events, luncheon gatherings and exhibits. Its most well-known program is "Speaking of Shakespeare," a once-a-month conversation series held at the British Embassy and the National Press Club which have featured actors like Patrick Stewart and Hal Holbrook, along with directors Peter Brook and Michael Kahn, and journalists Cokie Roberts, Rita Kempley and Linda Wertheimer.
"In the past we've usually done a conversation as part of the Gielgud event," Shakespeare Guild founder John F. Andrews told BroadwayNow. "We showed highlights of films of Ian McKellen and Sir Derek Jacobi along with a talk in which they discuss their work. Last year we put together an evening billed as 'An Evening With Mr. and Mrs. Theater' with Zoe Caldwell and Robert Whitehead, moderated by [NPR correspondent] Susan Stamberg. We don’t know that we will we hold a conversation this year though. We haven’t approached Judi Dench about it, although as we approach the May 17 benefit, we'd like to see if she could come down to Washington, D.C. and give a talk. We hope she will agree."
The Gielgud Award selection committee has been composed of five members since its inception. They are Robert MacNeil, Susan Stamberg, playwright Ken Ludwig, cultural leader Kitty Carlisle Hart, and Roger Pringle, director of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford.
Andrews founded the Shakespeare Guild in 1987. He is a professor who has taught at
Florida State University, is a former editor of The Shakespeare Quarterly, and is now
editing the 40-volume paperback series of "The Everyman Sheakespeare," the first 16
volumes of which have been co-published by J. M. Dent Publishers in London and
Charles E. Tuttle Company in Boston.
Proceeds for the event will benefit The Shakespeare Guild and ten other theater
companies and organizations who are participating in the event.
"The evening will benefit different organizations, but it will take different forms for
different organizations," said Andrews. "For example, Theatre for a New Audience will
receive 15 percent of all benefit tickets sold to their members. Other organizations
have chosen a similar option of giving their members a 15 percent discount. They
include the Shakespeare Society, the American Friends of Sadler Wells, and the
Chicago Shakespeare Theater."
On the other hand, the New York Shakespeare Festival and the Royal Shakespeare
Company, which are listed in the invitations, are not involved as institutions but have
lent their names as "special partner for the event."
The Shakespeare Guild will earmark 15 percent of its net proceeds for a charitable
trust that Dench will create. The trust is meant "to relocate and to maintain, for use by
aspiring drama professionals," the Rose playhouse set that Miramax constructed for
the Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love.