Singer/songwriter Rufus Wainwright performs during Proms In The Park at Hyde Park on September 13, 2014 in London, United Kingdom

Robert Wilson and Rufus Wainwright's Gender-Bending Take on Shakespeare

The Leonard Lopate Show | Oct 3, 2014

Director Robert Wilson and composer Rufus Wainwright discuss Shakespeare’s Sonnets, a contemporary take on 25 specially chosen sonnets from Shakespeare’s cannon set to a sweeping score. It’s a genre-bending mix of medieval German Minnesang, classical, pop, and cabaret rock is performed by Bertolt Brecht’s historic Berliner Ensemble. Wilson and Wainwright ruminate on beauty and eternity and embrace subversive gender conventions embedded in the sonnets, which move fluidly between male and female objects of desire. Shakespeare’s Sonnets are playing at BAM’s Howard Gilman Opera House October 7-12.

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