Tour to celebrate 439th birthday of Shakespeare

WASHINGTON -- Shakespeare's 439th birthday is being celebrated Wednesday with the news that American theater companies will take four of his best known plays on a tour of all 50 states.\nThe new head of the National Endowment for the Arts, Dana Gioia, called the project, which already involves six touring theater companies, the biggest undertaking since the agency was set up under President Lyndon Johnson.\nThe endowment is negotiating with a seventh company, the Alabama Shakespeare Festival, to take "Macbeth" to military bases around the country. "Remember that there are 1.4 million Americans in uniform," Gioia said in an interview. "The NEA hasn't done anything special for them and their families in its 38-year history."\nOne company, Artists Repertory Theatre of Portland, Ore., will play "A Midsummer Night's Dream" with some actors speaking English and others, from the Central Dramatic Company of Vietnam, speaking their own language. The company did Vietnam's first production of the play, using the two languages. U.S. audiences will be helped by translations flashed on a screen.\nThe first idea for the project came from Gioia's predecessor, Michael Hammond, who died eight days after taking office last year. Since then plans have grown bigger and bigger, Gioia said, into what the NEA calls the biggest Shakespeare tour in American history.\nIt will visit 100 small and mid-sized communities from Anchorage, Alaska, to West Palm Beach, Fla., including many towns which never see a professional company in the flesh. To encourage live theater in those locations, the six touring companies will run discussions, workshops and educational programs as well as performing.\nGioia hopes to spread the 15-month tour's influence to 1,000 schools. After it ends next year, he wants to start an annual high school students' contest in recitation. It's a skill that was once traditional in American schools, but has faded in recent years.\n"What we are trying to do is revive what we think of as a terrific tradition, which not only introduces students to Shakespeare but also develops their ability as public speakers, which is a skill that adults use every day," Gioia said.\n"Some kids are not natural students, but they're natural performers."\n"Othello" will be done by Aquila Theatre Company of New York and The Guthrie Theater of Minneapolis. Arts Midwest of Minneapolis, a nonprofit group, is cooperating with the NEA on the entire project.\nThe Chicago Shakespeare Theater and the Arkansas Repertory Theatre of Little Rock will share "Romeo and Juliet"