100 Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet 1968
William Shakespeare serves as the inspiration for this week’s episode of From the Vault. In moving forward with the Pacifica Radio Archives 1968 Revolution Rewind Initiative, we searched for recordings that not only covered the events of that year like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, The Poor People’s Campaign, and student uprisings across the country, but also recordings that exhibited the explosion of creativity that was finding its way onto community radio airwaves forty years ago. Pacifica producers dove into the classic arts headfirst – and the work of William Shakespeare became common place on radio stations like WBAI-99.5 FM in New York City. In fact, between 1966 and 1968, one prolific enthusiast named Alfred Rothschild performed on-air at least 13 readings of Shakespeare’s plays; in the first part of today’s show we’ll hear his rendition of Romeo and Juliet. We couldn’t resist another adaptation of Shakespeare’s love story, this one imagined by legendary New York dramatist and radio producer Baird Searles and the famed Mind’s Eye Theatre, truly avant guard by any standard. Their deliberate use of anachronisms, using songs by The Beatles and Rolling Stones, along with pushing the limits with a relatively new technology called stereophonic sound, made for one far out and hippie-fueled production of Romeo and Juliet. Enjoy this forty year journey back to 1968, and the arts on community radio!
From the Vault is presented as part of the Pacifica Radio Archives Preservation and Access Project.
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