Shakespeare in Prisons Conference

Shakespeare and the Alchemy of Gender is a 55-minute solo show in which Lisa Wolpe personalizes her experience of performing many of Shakespeare’s cross-gender roles. Wolpe speaks about liberation from the “gender box” of expectations and behaviors. She performs Shylock’s “pound of flesh” speech from The Merchant of Venice and Hamlet’s contemplation of suicide and ghostly suffering in his “to be or not to be” soliloquy. She looks at her father’s role as a Resistance fighter against the Nazis and grapples with his suicide resulting from the memories that haunted him. She looks for ways to blend autobiographical sourcing and classical work in a way that makes performing Shakespeare both personal and political.