Welcome to Speak the Speech! We're a small organization in Portland, Oregon, working to freely distribute engaging audio presentations of all of Shakespeare's plays to as wide an audience as possible via the internet and other electronic media. This will make Shakespeare more accessible to educators, the visually impaired, the disabled, people in rural areas, military personnel serving overseas, and the intellectually curious.
Although Shakespeare is hailed for his unprecedented understanding of the breadth of human variety, his plays are often perceived as reserved for the elite. Educational, economic, racial, geographic, and other societal divisions have distanced Shakespeare from a large potential audience. Efforts are increasing to erase those societal boundaries. For example, recently the NEA sponsored the largest tour of Shakespeare's plays in American history, reaching public schools, university theaters, and military bases. As a result, over a million high-school students were introduced to live Shakespeare. However, Speak the Speech provides a way for an even greater number of people to access performances of all of Shakespeare's plays.
The Internet reaches seventy-five percent of the American population, and that percentage is growing across all demographics. Internet radio and downloading is especially popular among 12 to 25 year olds. While this is the age when most people are first introduced to Shakespeare, they are unlikely to purchase a high quality audio performance. They may try to access an audio recording at a library, but not all libraries possess these recordings and interlibrary loans do not send audio materials. This is particularly problematic in rural areas. Thanks to the accessibility of the Internet, the plays would be instantly available wherever there was an Internet connection, including schools and libraries.
Audio theatre is a wonderful match for Shakespeare, whose love of wordplay is most apparent when professional actors speak his text. Listening to actors perform Shakespeare's plays reveals layers of meaning in the Elizabethan English that are not easily discerned by other means. Audio theatre places emphasis on what made Shakespeare great: his use of language. Not only does audio theatre work well for Shakespeare, but Shakespeare's style of writing is particularly suited for audio theatre, as it incorporates many stage directions into the text, so that the characters often say what they are doing as they do it. This creates an audio picture, much like those created during the Golden Days of radio.
Various theatre companies around the nation, and perhaps the world, will be asked to record a performance. The performances will be professionally recorded in a studio, before a live audience or in other suitable venues, and edited to ensure that they are suitable for audio theatre. The plays will then be put up for free distribution online: provided nobody sells, changes, or takes undue credit for the work, they are encouraged to distribute the recordings however they can. An annotated script will accompany each play, so that the audience can follow along on the website. By hovering over selected parts of the script, the audience will find notes from the actors and director, as well as definitions of archaic words. This will make the website one of the most helpful online Shakespeare resources available.
Peter Pressman, founder of Speak the Speech, obtained his degrees in English and Biology with a minor in theatre from Lewis & Clark in Portland, Oregon. Peter also has a background in web and audio design. Favorite roles include the Baker in Into the Woods, Orsino in Twelfth Night, and Pinocchio in, well, Pinocchio. Other voice work includes narration of an educational theatre history series. Currently a medical student at Oregon Health & Science University, Peter also enjoys the Bujinkan Dojo, occasional trapeze, and paleontology.
Emily Ward is currently teaching drama at a middle school in McMinnville. She obtained her BA in Theatre and her MAT from Pacific University. Besides teaching, Emily dabbles in all aspects of theatre. Her Portland acting debut, in the summer of 2006, was with the Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon, where she was in the chorus for Orestes. She also has worked as the box office manager for Profile Theatre, CoHo Productions and Home Planet Productions. Emily designs and maintains six websites including this one!
Autumn Lawrence has been a stage manager in Portland area theater for nearly twenty years now, helming productions with casts ranging in size from 1 to 37. Most recently she has stage managed for Mt. Hood Repertory Theater (where she also serves as Festival Stage Manager), and for Clackamas Repertory Theater, where she worked on the world premiere of The Illustrated Man. Autumn has a long-standing love of theater and of organizing people, and both of these make her a good fit for the Speak the Speech board.
Myrlin Hermes is a Portland novelist and poet who hopes to make the beauty of Shakespeare's language accessible to a wider audience. A graduate of Reed College, she went on to a Master's Degree at the University of London, where, studying under Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, she wrote her dissertation on historical and contemporary adaptations of Hamlet. She has received grants from the Arts Council England and the Institute for the Humane Studies, and was the winner of the 2006 Arch & Bruce Brown Foundation fiction prize. Her first novel, Careful What You Wish For, was published by Simon & Schuster in 1999.
Get Involved
If you'd like to help make Shakespeare more accessible for
everyone, or contribute a production to the site, please contact us! We need
volunteers from all kinds of backgrounds and professions. Currently we are in
need of talented Grant Writers!
Contact Information
Address:
Speak the Speech Co.
3327A SW 12th Ave.
Portland, OR 97239
Email:
speaksecretary@gmail.com
Phone:
(503) 490-6522 or (503) 547-9817