GIFT TO THE FUTURE
A play in one act
written and performed by Colin David Reese
Discover VIDEO  (5Mo)
1623John Heminges returns to his house on the site of the Globe Theatre with a precious package: the first edition of William Shakespeare's "Comedies Histories and Tragedies" As John starts to read through the plays, the memories come flooding back - of back stage intrigues, performances, successes and disasters and above all the importance of preserving the writings of a genius who, according to Ben Jonson, "was not of an age, but for all time" 
By giving the narrative to what was almost certainly Shakespeare's closest friend, John Heminges, "Gift to the Future" creates a convincing argument over the authorship question "Who wrote Shakespeare?" 
"Gift to the Future" lays all doubts to rest because it is steeped in the one aspect which the anti-Stratfordians seem to have completely (and conveniently) neglected: These plays are perfect in their theatricality and stage craft. Only a true theatre professional could have "wrought" these masterpieces... someone who was intimately familiar with the playmaking process, how to produce tension and drama, what an actor needed technically to create a character. 
The only reasonable conclusion is that William Shakespeare of Stratford did indeed write these plays -- taking into consideration all the known facts, the contemporary references and the fact that the playwright was most certainly a working professional. It is not known why Heminges should have taken on the immense task of collecting the plays into one volume. One can only believe that some things are eternal: comradeship, professional respect, and an awareness of genius. It is high time that Heminges's dedication be fully recognised and appreciated.
"One remains captivated by the charm of this evocation of Shakespeare"
"Very good play. The actor lives the character and the audience soon forgets that it's an actor and not John Heminges himself."
The Rose Theatre 
(look out for the Blue Plaque next to Southwark Bridge) Nearest Mainline / Tube Stations: London Bridge, Mansion House or Waterloo The Authorship Debate - Colin David Reese replies in The Stage Newspaper |
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Some criticisms from BilletReduc
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Description
1623
John Heminges returns home to his house on the site of the Globe Theatre with a precious package - the first edition of William Shakespeare's "Comedies Histories and Tragedies" which he has just collected from the printer Isaac Jaggard.Heminges and Henry Condell have spent the 7 years since William's death looking through prompt books, cue scripts, plot sheets, William's own writings, searching through the Tiring House of the Globe and studying previously printed versions of his plays. Finally they amassed an exhaustive collection and working with the Jaggards - William and Isaac - they have produced this wonderful document.
Sitting down to study the result of this work, John Heminges reminisces about his life-long friendship with "young Will" which had started 36 years before, in the White Swan in Stratford when William was 23 and John 31.
Throughout his working life John had been at William's side, advising him and acting in his plays as well as managing the Chamberlain's (now the King's) Men; steering the company, of which Will was such an important member, through the troubled waters of Elizabethan and Jacobean politics, organising royal patronage, fending off the tiresome Puritans and threats from the Plague.
As he starts to read through the plays, the memories come flooding back - of performances, back stage intrigues, successes and disasters and above all the importance of preserving the writings of a genius who was "not of an age, but for all time" as Ben Jonson so cogently wrote in the introduction to what we now know as :
"Shakespeare's First Folio"
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Author's note
As all biographies of William Shakespeare, this is essentially a fiction. The known facts about the man being that he was born, married, had children, bought property and died. The rest remains conjecture."Gift to the Future" brings to life what I consider to be a plausible vision of a man of the theatre as viewed by a life-time friend and colleague.
As a man of the theatre myself, the research that I have done over the years into the vast body of work written about the man, the theatre of the time, the social place of the players in Elizabethan/Jacobean life, has been naturally influenced by my own curiosity into what it must have been like to be a player on the boards of The Theatre, The Globe and subsequently The Blackfriars.
By illustrating the story line with readings from the plays, I have tried to show the eclectic nature of his creations. It is impossible to assess the character of an artist from his works. Imagine a psychologist trying to analyse Picasso from his paintings (or better still Jackson Pollock) Shakespeare created hundreds of very different personalities from his imagination, none of which gives us any real insight into the man himself. There are various contemporary references to Shakespeare which are for the most part highly complimentary (with one notable exception) and it seems that his reputation at the time was of a likeable person and talented 'poet'.
Much of this research has been within the world of academic studies - written by academics, for academics. Many times I felt that the resulting works were missing the point. The plays were written to be "played". Not as philosophy and certainly not as literature. A playwright, particularly a playwright working within an established company and creating parts for specific actors, has only one aim in mind - to create characters and a story that will live on stage and hold an audience. Furthermore the players of the time were working under a very specific set of conditions and so for the play to progress, much of what was written into the actors' texts would be necessary instructions concerning what we in the modern theatre would consider to be "the direction".
The theatre is ephemeral and all the indications point to the fact that Shakespeare considered his theatrical creations as such. It is reasonable to suppose that only Heminges and Ben Jonson recognised the eternal value of his works. Heminges being the financial and management controller of the company was uniquely placed to achieve the - what must have been massive - task of accumulating the disparate documents (cue scripts, plot sheets, prompt books, etc.) necessary to create the Folio.
That a man should consecrate so much time and energy to such a task at an advanced age (he was 67 at the time of the final printing) with little hope of financial reward for his efforts indicates a singular dedication to the memory of a friend and genius.
A veritable "Gift to the Future"
Colin David REESE
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John heminges from wikipedia
John Heminges (sometimes spelled Hemminge or Hemings) (About 1556 - 1630) was an English Renaissance actor. Most famous now as one of the editors of Shakespeare's 1623 First Folio, Heminges served in his time as an actor and financial manager for the King's Men.Life
Heminges was born in Droitwich Spa, Worcestershire in 1556. Sent to London as an apprentice at age twelve, he was presented to the Grocers' Company, becoming a freeman in 1587. In London, he lived in the parish of St Mary Aldermanbury, at which church he served as a sidesman. He married in 1588; Alexander Chalmers originated the now-accepted argument that his wife was the widow of William Knel, an actor with the Queen's Men who had been killed in a fight with a fellow actor. His association with theatre had certainly begun by 1593; records from that year show Heminges and Augustine Phillips, another future King's Man, in the touring company of Lord Strange's Men. By the next year he and Phillips had joined the Lord Chamberlain's Men/King's Men. He stayed with this company until his death in 1630. In 1630, Privy Council records show him receiving one hundred pounds to relieve the company during a period of plague; Heminges himself died a short time after this order, at age 74. With Henry Condell, he connected the era of Shakespeare and Burbage to the era of Philip Massinger and Joseph Taylor; most significantly, his editorial efforts were vital to preserving a number of Shakespeare's plays, some of which might have been lost otherwise. Heminges remained active in the Grocers' Company alongside his theatrical activities; indeed, the two sometimes intertwined.He was, between 1608 and 1621, one of the ten citizen seacoal-meters for the city of London. Beginning in 1595, he bound ten apprentices with the Grocers' Company; of these ten, eight appear to have performed for Heminges' company, in both boys' and adult roles. Alexander Cooke was one of his apprentices. Heminges was confirmed as a gentleman in 1629, shortly before his death.
Work
The extent and nature of Heminges' acting is not entirely clear. He is known to have performed in Ben Jonson's Sejanus and Every Man in His Humour (in both cases, alongside Shakespeare). A Jacobean inscription in the 1616 Jonson folio lists him playing the role of Corbaccio in Volpone; since the same list includes Nathaniel Field, who did not join the King's Men until 1616, it seems that Heminges continued to act, at least intermittently, into his fifties. Edmond Malone reported seeing Heminges' name associated with the role of Falstaff; there is, however, no other evidence exists of this connection.There is little more evidence to substantiate the claim later made by an actor to Alexander Pope that Heminges was a tragedian. Of his activities as manager more is known. Court documents relating to the King's Men generally list Heminges as the recipient of money due the company; the records of Henry Herbert indicate that Heminges at least sometimes served as the point of contact between the company and the Master of the Revels. He appears to have owned a structure abutting the Globe Theatre, which may have been used as an alehouse. He served as trustee for Shakespeare when the latter purchased a house in Blackfriars in 1613. Shakespeare bequeathed him (along with Condell) two nobles (roughly a pound) to buy mourning rings.
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Colin David Reese - a biography
Colin David Reese was born in 1950 in London. The son of celebrated radio actor, Harold Reese, his first appearance on stage was at the age of 5, his first professional appearance at 12, in a musical fantasy "All The King's Men" about the life of (of course) Shakespeare, as his illegitimate son.On leaving school in 1967, Colin immediately went into the professional theatre, at Plymouth where he performed in a number of plays during the season, including Romeo and Juliet, directed by Joan Knight. A number of other regional contracts followed, leading to a role in 1968 for an 18 month run as one of the boys in Alan Bennett's "40 Years On" at the Apollo Theatre in London, starring Sir John Gielgud, Paul Eddington, Alan Bennett and directed by Patrick Garland. Backstage conversations often turned to Colin's favourite subject and the delight of an 18 year old at being so close to perhaps the greatest Shakespearean actor of the century is easy to imagine.
The usual life of a young working actor, small parts in TV productions, tours, pantomimes occupied the next few years - then a part in Christopher Hampton's "The Philanthropist" starring Nigel Hawthorne at the MayFair Theatre for 15 months. A professional training at the world famous Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London where he graduated in 1975, followed by three years in Edmonton (Alberta) and Kamloops (BC). In 1978 he took a year off to travel - Israel, Greece, Yugoslavia, Italy, France, returning to London to continue his career.
From 1979 to 1990 he worked in many different aspects of the profession, notably a 7 month run in 1985 at the Haymarket Theatre in Tennessee Williams' "Sweet Bird of Youth" directed by Harold Pinter and starring Lauren Bacall. It was in this year that he also started his own company - Jericho Theatrical Productions, specifically to mount a production that he had compiled with his father; "A Lover and His Lass" - a two-handed compilation of love scenes from Shakespeare. It was doing the research for this production that the real obsession began. How could these scenes, out of the context of their plays, stand alone? Research into the Elizabethan Theatre gave the answer but opened another, larger question. 150 plays a year, access to cue-scripts only, how could the players have managed to perform and be as successful as they were ?
Dulwich College in London, a school founded by Edward Alleyn, one of Shakespeare's contemporaries, contains an unusual series of documents from the period including a cue-script and a plot sheet. Colin went to study them. Standing in the school library with a cue-script in one hand and a plot sheet in the other, a shiver ran down his spine. "As an actor, I could see how it worked." Prove it! More research into the history of British theatre before Shakespeare finally provided the answer: Comedia dell' Arte. Elizabethan actors were working in the same way as the Italian masters of the most successful theatrical form ever, a form which lasted almost unchanged for about 300 years. The influence of Comedia on Shakespeare's writings is highly visible. Where to study Comedia dell' Arte ? The only two serious practitioners were Georgio Strehler in Milan and Jacques Lecoq in Paris.
In 1990, at the age of 40, Colin went to Paris to spend 2 years as a student at the Ecole Internationale du Théâtre with Jacques Lecoq. He still lives in France with his two children and runs "La Compagnie du Cèdre" for which he has since written and mounted 8 productions in English and French.
Colin can currently be seen on the big screen as Colonel Maurice Buckmaster in Jean-Paul Salomé's latest film "Les Femmes de L'Ombre".
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