The French artist Jean Noel Vandaele talks about his work over the last decade drawing scenes from the plays of Shakespeare, an output that now numbers ten dozen works:
The process of making one drawing after the other for the Theatre of William Shakespeare is easy. You read and study the text of one play, again and again… You choose and visualize one scene that appears to be crucial, evocative and beautifully written. Then you draw it with graphite and colored pencil on paper. That looks quite simple.
You might be fussy because your actors are from the Invisible Island, that place you discovered in the imaginary. Of course they have full colored faces on profile with no eyes, but they’re talented performers and they spend all their time playing William Shakespeare without any kind of misrepresentation. That looks not really impracticable. You only need enough time to realize your Complete Theatre of William Shakespeare in 120 drawings. Maybe the time that it took Shakespeare himself to write his more than 30 plays. That only looks like only a lifetime. // Jean Noel Vandaele
Coriolanus, Act III scene 3, Coriolanus: “There is a world elsewhere”;
Measure for Measure, Act IV scene 2, Pompey: “but what mystery there should be in hanging?”; Timon of Athens, Act III, Scene 6, Timon: “and sprinkles in your faces your reeking villany”‘; King Henry IV, Act IV, scene 2, Prince John of Lancaster: “Most shallowly did you these arms commence/Fondly brought here and foolishly sent hence.”
