Seventeenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

This paper asks what can be learned from a young people’s theatre group that we co-founded eight years ago in Ottawa, Canada, which is dedicated each year to producing a play by William Shakespeare. Each autumn we stage our productions as fundraisers for a local charity (such as the local food bank or homeless shelter). The enthusiasm our theatre company has generated offers an important perspective on debates about the crisis in the Humanities. As English professors, we know all about the pressures facing the Humanities today, from sagging enrolments to reduced research funding. But our experience has reaffirmed our faith in the importance of the Humanities for society at large. This is a crucial point that we forget at our peril. The response to our neighbourhood theatre affirmed our belief that children would find Shakespeare both accessible and appealing. What caught us by surprise is the extent to which this enthusiasm has been shared by audiences of all backgrounds – from people working in the high-tech industry, to teachers, doctors, and journalists, to our postman and neighbourhood dog-walker! This paper will pursue the question of how to reconcile this ongoing enthusiasm for the Arts with the pressures that face the Humanities today. At a time when Shakespeare is being removed from public-school and university curricula, our experience provides an instructive case-study for devising ways to articulate more effective arguments for the public value of cultural activities whose “impact” cannot be reduced to metrics or a rhetoric of applied knowledge.