Millenium Shakespeare

Millennium Shakespeare is a large-scale cultural project aimed at introducing William Shakespeare’s works to the younger audience. It has been developed so as to include all the Shakespeare plays and consists of book publishing and a touring art exhibition.

The project creator Michael J. Stewart has began to publish a series of 38 books in simple English prose, which introduces the reader in an easy to understand narrative of the plots from Shakespeare’s stories, complimented with illustrations from artists worldwide. Each artist is to paint a series of pictures representing a particular title. The concept requires that the artist offers an expression of their own culture while representing the narrative and philosophical values within the story. It is intended for the complete canon of Shakespeare to be complimented with a total of 228 works of art - 6 works of art per story plus a manuscript letter.

The books target primarily the children aged 8 and above but are also intended for the general reader. Three of them - “King Lear”, “The Merry Wives of Windsor”, and “” - have been published, edited by Jeffrey Kahan (Ph.D. Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham), Assistant Professor, University of La Verne.

The second part of the project is the touring Millennium Shakespeare Art Exhibition. It shows the art pieces used as illustrations in the books exposed on water proof canvass up to 3 m high. The exhibition is to take place in public spaces, parks, gardens, open areas in city centres, large open public spaces. The first ‘Foretaste’ Millennium Shakespeare Art Exhibition was held on 7th May 2008 at St. Lawrence Church Ipswich, Suffolk England.

The formal project released was in April 2006 and the books were available the Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford and officially released at the Bologna Book fair in Italy 2006.

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