A mental shutdown can happen when a young person is put in front of a Shakespeare play. My pieces are designed to release young audiences into the story and then creep up with the real Shakespeare, almost by stealth.
To have a sense of contemporary ownership of Shakespeare is the most important thing to his work.
Each of my Shakespeare pieces is different to the other, but each espouses a set of philosophies common to all my theatre work.
Anything one can do to provoke and inspire an interest in the works of Shakespeare in a young audience is fair game. Anything.
Keeping young people away from Shakespeare is like removing a link to their humanness.