How can a play have power? The fact that we even have to ask that question is dramatic evidence of how important our work is. One of the dangers of great success in one area of life is that the other areas can get overshadowed and forgotten. The overleaping technological gains of recent decades are so dazzling that, as a society, we tend to forget that it’s only technology. We are brilliant at answering the question “how,” but often forget even to ask “why.” However, this is the vastly more important question -- what does it matter how fast you are if you don’t know where you want to go?

Stories are about “why.” It is through stories that we learn to deal with ambition, jealousy, triumph, grief, faith, loss, prejudice, hope, despair and love. These are the bricks and mortar on which our lives are built. And it is not science that teaches us how to grapple with these issues, but art.

“One of our problems today is that we are not well acquainted with the literature of the spirit. We’re interested in the news of the day and the problems of the hour…we do not pay attention to the inner life and the magnificent human heritage we have in our great tradition- Plato, Confucius, the Buddha, Goethe, Shakespeare and others who speak to the eternal values that have to do with the centering of our lives.”

What we have in common is revealed in these mythical and grand stories, and provide a direct pathway to the “inner life” to which Campbell refers. Cellular biology may be the answer to life-threatening diseases, but stories – in particular the great, timeless classics that reach deep into our collective unconscious – are the answer to despair, strife, loneliness and shame. For an example of the profound power of these stories, we need look no farther than the words of The Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival's founder, Carmen Khan.

“I was first introduced to these plays at the age of fourteen, living in a troubled home in a frightening neighborhood. The plays took me out of my world and myself. There emerged within me the palpable idea that life could be more than survival -- that it could be a vigorous, imaginative and emotional journey. I was saved by Shakespeare. The Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival was born out of my gratitude and my desire to share this exquisitely joyous experience with others.”

At The Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival, we seek to provide nothing less than this kind of transformational experience. When it works, the audience can encounter a sea of imagination, where we are transformed, where our oft-numbed sense of astonishment is thrillingly re-engaged, where we learn with new clarity our own deepest, most complex and delicate human feelings, and we emerge refreshed, soothed, re-created.

So why a Shakespeare Festival, and not Plato or Goethe? As a cultural icon, the figure of Shakespeare stands head and shoulders above all others. Everyone in our society knows who wrote “to be or not to be.” Without a doubt, America's cultural diversity — the constant influx of new ideas and ways brought to America by each new wave of immigrants — has been a great source of growth and cultural richness. But that diversity only works as long as we are integrated into a single society, as long as our ideas are integrated into a single culture, rather than simply living side-by-side. Among the entire vast catalogue of our English-speaking heritage, the plays of William Shakespeare stand alone as the one body of work whose value and importance all agree on. He alone transcends the boundaries of language and religion. There are other artists of great power and resonance, of course, but none who can claim the near-universal endorsement of Shakespeare.

There is a reason that Shakespeare is so honored. Other authors have contributed valuable pieces to the puzzle of our collective understanding, but none have approached the encyclopedic anatomy of the archetypes of the human spirit that Shakespeare gave us. There is no parallel to the clarity and precision with which Shakespeare reveals the inner workings of Othello’s jealousy, Lear’s descent into madness, Beatrice's falling in love, Claudius’ guilt, Hamlet’s dilemm, Leontes’ redemption, on and on. Add Shakespeare’s exquisite poetry and vast emotional vocabulary to his rich characters, and we have a body of work of unparalleled power.

When plenty of other theatres around town occasionally produce Shakespeare, why do we need a theatre devoted to Shakespeare?

Because of what we call “the Lost Four Fifths.”

It is what we at the Festival refer to as the hidden drama. Although Shakespeare's magnificent metaphors and dazzling word play alone are enough to make him required reading, they are not even half the story. Shakespeare didn't bother to spell out the intricate symphony of harmony and contrast in the layers of drama as the various relationships on stage unfold as he wrote these plays with the intention of directing them himself. So for us, four hundred years later, the drama is missing from the text. This is what we call the “Lost Four Fifths” of Shakespeare.

Here at The Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival, we have developed a unique and groundbreaking technique for "reverse-engineering" Shakespeare's plays, to recover that lost drama and make it visible to the audience. This is very specialized work, that has taken us years to develop and refine and takes all of our energy, skill and intuition.

In the absence of that detailed reverse-engineering, stage productions of Shakespeare can often seem like a blur of words and movement, often with an addition of clever tricks that can keep the audience engaged, but in the end, they still leave you wondering what it was about. This is why Shakespeare has such a bad reputation in some circles. A Shakespeare play approached the same way, as a modern play can be really difficult to understand, because the heart of it is simply missing.

With Shakespeare’s original comedy and drama restored, however, it is thrilling to watch, spontaneous, alive, and as far from stilted as can be. So many times we have had audiences come out and say, “I’ve seen a dozen productions of this play, but I feel I just saw it for the first time,” or even, “Who wrote that? That can’t have been written four hundred years ago.”