Sir Ben Kingsley has warned that pupils are being turned off Shakespeare because they don’t get the chance to see the plays performed.
The Oscar and Bafta-winning actor said more needed to be done to stimulate interest in the Bard in order to benefit the next generation of actors.
Sir Ben, 69, who spent 15 years at the Royal Shakespeare Company, told the Standard: “I think we must be very, very careful not to relegate Shakespeare to the past and dismiss him as obsolete.”
Last week, Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes was criticised for saying that people needed a “Shakespearean scholarship” to understand his verse. Some of Britain’s leading actors, including Sir Michael Gambon, Mark Rylance and Zoe Wanamaker, also admitted struggling with Shakespeare. However, Sir Ben said: “After leaving the RSC and before I did Gandhi [in 1982], I had the privilege of visiting schools in America with a group of Shakespearean actors. And instead of bashing their way through the text, we walked into the classroom and we performed scenes in the classroom for them. The pupils were slapping their hands on their foreheads and saying, ‘Wow — that’s what he meant!’
“A good actor, a focused actor, can unlock a 400 to 500-year-old text and make it hit you as you’ve never heard it before. A short answer to the question of whether we need to do more to stimulate the interest of children is, ‘Yes please’, but let it be done under the right conditions.
“Let’s go into schools and say, this is our little group of actors, this is the first scene of Henry IV part II, listen … Honestly, they’ll be jumping out of their seat. It’s magic stuff.”
Sir Ben is promoting his latest project, the sci-fi movie Ender’s Game which is based on the cult novel. He said of the film, in which he stars with Harrison Ford: “Those chaps who wouldn’t normally see a science-fiction film, go and see this one. There are layers in it about the struggle of an adolescent forced into adulthood. I think audiences will recognise themselves in the film.”
Despite beginning his career on the stage, he said he had no plans to return to the West End because is too busy producing and acting in films.
He said: “I’m afraid not. It’s very delightful to think that I would be welcomed back, but being a film producer is a 24/7 job. If I was in rehearsals I would constantly be having to go off and take phone calls, which wouldn’t be fair.”
Ender’s Game is out from Friday
