Name: Dear Mr Shakespeare: Shakespeare Lives
Genre: Short, Drama
Released: 2016-10-07
Duration: 5 min
Rating: 7.6
Cast: Ashley Thomas, Phoebe Boswell, Elisa Lasowski

Engagingly poetic delivery that touches on a lot

Usually I am not a fan of performance pieces. I do watch a lot of short films, but they tend to be documentary or narrative driven, with not so many driven by poetry or artistic virtue in the way that this one is. This short film starts with an actor portraying Othello but jumps to the writer of this short delivering a rhyming thought piece on the root of the character, the relevance of the play, and the striking selection of character.

I am not the great Shakespeare fan that I wish I was – although I have seen many stage and screen versions of his work. Othello in particular I have seen many version – the last of which was ironically dominated by the actor playing Iago (Dominic West, playing opposite his Wire counterpart Clarke Peters). Here the star is Phoebe Boswell, and she delivers a thoughtful and thought- provoking piece on the nature of the character. It is engaging in its rhythm but also in its content. I confess that I have only ever watched the play for the narrative that it plays out, and it had not really the period this was written, and the fact that it is an interracial love story with a black lead, written hundreds of years ago.

The manner of delivery is odd but engaging; it does very much have the performance aspect writ large, but at the same time it is an engaging style and I enjoyed the content just as much. Odd for sure, but engaging. Apparently this is part of a series through The Guardian, so I will be looking to see the rest now.

The drama genre is a broad category that features stories portraying human experiences, emotions, conflicts, and relationships in a realistic and emotionally impactful way. Dramas delve into the complexities of human life, often exploring themes of love, loss, morality, societal issues, personal growth, with the aim to evoke an emotional response from the audience by presenting relatable and thought-provoking stories.

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The short form refers to creative works characterized by their brevity and concise storytelling. Unlike full-length feature films, short films have a running time of less than 45 minutes, while TV shorts have a running time of less than 22 minutes.

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An evocative and imaginative exploration of the racial tensions in Othello and how the themes in Shakespeare's play still resonate today.

Ashley Thomas in Dear Mr Shakespeare: Shakespeare Lives (2016)

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Dear Mr Shakespeare: Shakespeare Lives

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