The Merchant of Venice

 In the next installment of this directing for the theater course with Carey Perloff, we read The Merchant of Venice. She directed a production in Canada with a woman (Seana McKenna) cast as Shylock, so today she told us about how she researched the play, made her casting choices, and how the language of the play was informed by that choice. Unfortunately I couldn't find any film clips of that show, but this interview with Jeremy Irons, Al Pacino and director Michael Radford talks about their process for the movie version with Charlie Rose. Jeremy Irons is very invested in denying the homo-eroticism of the Antonio-Bassanio relationship. Al Pacino is very eloquent on his process.