Heuristic Shakespeare is the new app by Sir Ian McKellen and director Richard Loncraine, celebrating the Bard’s 400-year anniversary.
During the European renaissance, William Shakespeare produced works of literature so great that over 56 million students worldwide still study them today. April 23rd marked the 400th year anniversary of his death.
In honour of the occasion, Sir Ian McKellen teamed up with Richard Loncraine – who directed him in their 1993 award winning interpretation of Richard III – to produce Heuristic Shakespeare, an app designed to make Shakespeare easy. The Tempest is the first play they have tackled.
Cinema Jam went along to the launch to speak to the pair about their project.
So they’ve put The Tempest on an app. “So what?” we hear you ask. Where this app has set itself apart from electronic manuscripts of the Bard’s work is that the play is performed for the user as they read it. McKellen leads in the role of Prospero. Neither he, nor any of the rest of the cast, are wearing period costumes or prancing around ornate sets, however. In fact, they don’t interact at all.
They merely read the text, looking constantly out at the user.
“We found so much research which suggests that if someone is making eye contact with you, it makes it so much easier to understand and retain what they are saying.” said Loncraine. “As humans, we take a lot of information from people as a result of their facial expressions and that’s a lot easier if they are looking at you. So this one-to-one relationship is dominant.”
As the text scrolls past, you are able to stop it at any point and access information on the meaning of a particular word or phrase. This aspect that been split into three categories, beginner, intermediate and advanced, with the latter aimed at actors and scholars.
“Reading the script of any play is a problem, even for professional actors,” said McKellen. “The app is designed to provide an answer. Following the text and watching the actors read the words out loud is like having your own private performance always at hand.”
The bland approach is to ensure that the magic of the theatre is not impeded. They insist that they have not set out to create an alternative to the theatre, but an aid to understanding what is being conveyed on the stage, he explained.
“We didn’t want to give too much of a performance because if we started doing that it would be obvious that we weren’t where we should have been – which is in the theatre.”
It’s only when you get into the theatre – which is of course what we want you to do – that you’ll experience the play as the man meant you to. But my goodness this is as close as you are going to get otherwise.”
Loncraine explains the project was filmed at Pinewood Studios, with the actors all sitting in a line facing forward, reading off a very large teleprompter and looking directly at two high definition 5k RED cameras. The screen is stripped to be just the actor’s head and shoulders. It makes for a flexible system, whereby an actor not in attendance can be added later. “It’s taken two and a half years and a lot of money but the structure we have now, we’ll use for the whole series,” the director said.
Due to a combination of integrity and not wanting to waste time on rehearsals, the duo have insisted that an actor has to have already performed the play in theatre in order to be able to be involved in the app.
Indeed, some big names have expressed interest in getting involved in the project since its inception over two years ago. The creators announced that Stephen Fry has shown interest in playing Malvolio in Twelfth Night and Patrick Stewart wants the titular character in Macbeth.
McKellen insists that it is going to be a far superior learning tool for students than anything that is available at the moment, saying that going to see a film adaptation of Macbeth is never going to be true to the original play because so many allowances have to be made in cinema.
“And the theatre can be tricky as well,” he went on, “I recently went to a production of King Lear – I won’t say where – and the actor got many of the lines wrong. I know because I’ve been King Lear. And directors will switch lines and swap scenes around. You won’t see any of that here, this is as close as you’ll get to the man himself.”
He says he would like to do more performances, but will shy away from the lead character in every play he tackles. The next four they have planned are Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, Othello and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A timeline will be announced once it becomes clear how successful the Heuristic Shakespeare: The Tempest is going to be.
