Shakespeare Made Accessible, Modern, and Local: Will O’Hare on Domino Workshop Series
Shakespeare is regarded by many as the greatest dramatist in the history of the English language, with a body of works that have been continually performed and studied over 400 years after his death. Yet, they are frequently dreaded by high school students and performers alike for its language, which can be made to feel otherworldly to modern ears.
Kingston now has a local solution: Will O’Hare. An experienced theatre director and educator, he’s worked in theatre spaces in Toronto, New York, and London, with a particular interest in sharing his passion for Shakespeare and making his plays accessible to a new generation of performers, arts-workers, and theatre-goers. I was lucky to chat with him just before registration opened for his upcoming ‘Fall Into Shakespeare’ Workshop at Domino Theatre, the fourth installation of his program. Not only speaking about the workshops themselves, we dove into the joys of community theatre, the bard’s continued relevance to the study of modern theatre, and the importance of keeping theatre education accessible to all who seek it.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did this workshop series and partnership with Domino begin?
I’m fairly new to Kingston: I’ve only been here two years now. My wife grew up here… and after our daughter was born, we started looking at where we wanted to raise our family and [when] we started looking at Kingston, we were really excited because we felt like there were opportunities here…
When we moved here, one of the things I was really interested in was exploring the arts scene here. As I was looking around at what was happening in the theatre world, I saw this production of As You Like It was happening [at Domino Theatre]. Our realtor, Glenn [Rea], did fights for the show, and he brought me along. On stage were, I think, around 25 actors, a huge cast…
You can create a space in which you can really have people involved and create something that’s truly accessible and inclusive in a way I found really exciting. So I reached out to Peter Aston, the director of the show, and we kicked off a series of hanging out and chatting at Juniper Cafe… talking about Shakespeare, and he was excited by my enthusiasm for the possibilities of what we could do or explore. We started cooking up this idea, doing a series of workshops, offering them to the Domino, but not an exclusive Domino thing. The idea was to have a home base there, but to open it up to people in the theatre community here, who maybe feel intimidated by Shakespeare, maybe never really had the chance to do it.
That accessibility point is especially what stood out to me about this series. Theatre education can often be difficult to access, particularly in a smaller city, which really makes this series stand out as unique and special. In your opinion, what is the biggest benefit to bringing hands-on, accessible education about Shakespeare’s texts to the local community?
I feel like my work really surrounds the idea of empowerment. When we talk about Shakespeare—and we actually dealt with this in the first workshop in the spring—we talk about the idea of all the baggage that comes with Shakespeare. The idea that we have this playwright who’s been dead for 400 years and the language can feel intimidating and inaccessible. A lot of us may have had a bad experience in school reading it and not understanding it. We bring all of that stuff.
The thing that I say is: Shakespeare was writing for actors. He was not writing for these to be written and read. There’s an immediacy to these plays for actors that I think can give us a sense of ownership over this, that the way we actually keep these plays alive is not by reading them, but by speaking them. The way that you are going to speak a speech or say a line is going to be different than the way that I am, and the way that somebody else is.
Keeping Shakespeare’s work alive in modern times, how does working with Shakespeare’s texts impact one’s practice [of] modern works and theatre styles, like a contemporary play or musical, which appear very different from his over 400 year old plays?
Shakespeare was writing early modern English… the language was growing, words were being added that we still speak today, on a daily basis, through these plays. But even more than that was this real exploration of the power of language. What is it to use language to persuade, to convince, to make an argument? And a lot of times when we break down a Shakespeare speech, we break down, “Okay, what’s the structure here? Hamlet has a problem, right?” And he states that problem. He works his way through it, and maybe by the end, he comes to some kind of conclusion at this moment…
Years ago, I worked for Disney Theatrical Productions for a little while. I got to work on Mary Poppins when that debuted on Broadway, and I got to help with some of the auditions. I was watching during the auditions one of the vocal coaches coaching one of the singers through a song, and I was like, “Wow, this is the same way that I work with a Shakespeare speech.” What we’re dealing with is not something that’s completely removed from our experience. When somebody breaks into song, say in a musical, they’ve reached a certain kind of emotional place where just everyday prose isn’t cutting it, and they need to go into a verse, right? That’s what often happens with Shakespeare.
To circle back to your experiences with previous workshops in the series, what has it been like to work with participants in these workshops thus far?
It’s been really, really exciting for me. What I was saying before about my reason for wanting to do this, working with Domino, and the exciting experience of As You Like It, is that true community spirit; the people that were supporting it and were a part of that production, I felt that way in these workshops.
I’ve had a real mix of people who’ve had a lot of experience in theatre, some of them with Shakespeare. Some who have been like, “I’ve never gotten it. I had to read it in school. I haven’t looked at it since, never thought I would come out and see what this is about.”
And I love that. I really, really, I love the opportunity to have a room full of people that are coming at it from these different perspectives. I want the perspectives of all of those folks, even those who feel like [they] don’t like this stuff that much, but [wonder] why everybody makes a big deal about this. I want to hear if—does anything change, does anything resonate as we go through these workshops through the fall?
Is there anything else you want to share ahead of the final sign up period for this series?
I want to share my enthusiasm and passion for this. I really passionately, firmly believe that Shakespeare is for everyone. Some of the most exciting rooms that I’ve ever been in have literally been classrooms I’ve gone into and [heard] a teenager speak Juliet’s lines. I’ve been like, “Wow, I’ve never heard it spoken that way, or that connected, or that immediate, or that real.” That’s why, for me, to be able to create a space in which we can explore… in which people can make their own discoveries, is really what I’m excited about. I hope this can kick off some further opportunities to work and explore beyond what we do this fall.
Will O’Hare is a Kingston-based photographer, theatre director, and educator with credits that include the Education Department of Shakespeare’s Globe in London, Resident Director and Education Director for Toronto’s Classical Theatre Project, and teaching in conservatory programs at Michael Howard Studios and for the Shakespeare Society in New York City. He maintains a photography studio at the Tett Centre for Creativity and Learning, and specializes in shooting portraits and headshots.
To learn more about O’Hare’s workshops at Domino Theatre, click here. The next workshop is November 2, 2025.
