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Educators use media to motivate discussion in the classroom because it engages students, aid student retention of knowledge, and motivates interest in the subject matter.

Tonight, we meet two filmmakers who are using media to bring to life the golden age of Hollywood and give a new spin on learning Shakespeare.

I'm so happy you're joining us.

From Los Angeles.

This is KLCS PBS.

Welcome to Everybody with Angela Williamson, an innovation, arts, education and public affairs program.

Everybody with Angela Williamson is made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you.

And now your host, doctor Angela Williamson.

I'm here with Frank Ferrante, who has been acting, directing and writing in Hollywood for over 35 years.

He is currently in his one man show.

Frank Ferrante Groucho on PBS.

Frank, thank you so much for being here and spending some time with me.

It's my pleasure.

Thank you.

Angela.

You know, my first question when I read your background was, what does a young Frank think when he's giving his student project on Groucho Marx and finds out that relatives are actually in the audience?

What's going through your mind?

fear.

There was nausea.

There was a lot going on there.

Angela.

now, it was a pretty gutsy thing for me to do.

I was studying at the University of Southern California, where this project started in 1980, 45.

This was 1985.

And I, I figured, what do I have to lose?

I saw someone do a one, a a show that had the Groucho character.

And I thought, I think I can do that.

So my mentor at USC said, well, why don't you combine your theater degree and your interest in live performance with this character that you've loved since you were a kid?

And that's what happened.

So we took it an extra step to get to your your question is that why not invite people that knew and loved him?

So I invited everyone that was still around at the time.

his children, Arthur Marx, who was a writer, his his, daughter, Miriam Marx Allen.

they both showed up, in April of 85.

Guy named a gentleman by the name of Maury Risk and who wrote Animal Crackers, coconuts and Night at the opera.

He was one of the writers.

He was 89 years old.

He was in the audience.

So I have probably the closest people to my hero on my campus watching me do this one person show, which is music and comedy, you know, comedy, of course, storytelling.

And, fortunately it went well.

But, I mean, I was I was shaking before I did, but I went out there with confidence.

And after the show, there was a little reception on campus.

And Arthur Marx, who was the playwright, said to me, if I ever do a show about my father again, I'd like to use you.

Well, I graduate and within weeks I'm in Kansas City in a dinner theater playing Groucho Marx, the the greatest comedian, in my opinion, from age 15 to 85.

And that show did really well in Kansas City.

And the producers of that show in Kansas City opted to take it to Off-Broadway, to New York.

So really, within a year of that performance where the Marx family, Arthur and Miriam saw me, I was in New York and it was a big hit in New York.

Off-Broadway, I was 23 years old, and, that played for about a year.

And then that show went to London on the West End, and it was nominated for what there are Tony Awards, the Laurence Olivier Award.

it was a thrill.

It was my entree into into the theater, into into acting and then later into directing.

But it's been a role that I've been doing consistently for many years.

I went into the jungle where all the monkeys thrown out.

If I stay here, I'll go nuts.

All right, all right, all right.

I put all my reliance and courage and defiance risk my life for science.

Hey, hey, I am the only person who's covered Africa.

I'll think I'll try and make her all right.

All right, all right.

I know it's good to see you again.

so it comes from my.

I have great affection.

It goes back to childhood with him.

So to be able to share his life on stage and on the on the PBS special, it means a lot to me.

Well, and that's only part of who Frank is.

There's more.

So I want to hear now.

I want to hear the more.

What else is Frank up to?

Well, I'm up to a lot.

Thankfully, I'm one of those one of those performers that actually works quite a bit and has since I graduated.

so, and a lot of it has had came from the Groucho role and it led to other work.

I ended up directing that show at one point of my Groucho show that Arthur wrote, and that led to other directing of From Neil Simon plays to original work, something called Old Wicked Songs, which received a Pulitzer Prize.

It was about a Holocaust survivor, and I directed this two person play, and so I was doing I love, I love theater, and I love storytelling, and the Groucho connection has led as inspired.

A lot of good work for me.

Something that I do that's really fun, that's related to Groucho, but in a way completely different is this character I do called the Caesar, which is this kind of Italian lover character with big hair and a little mustache and a little birthmark and a lounge outfit.

It's it's very it's wild character.

And he's.

Very.

Hello, everybody.

And he takes over the room and, it's a it's a Cirque show like Cirque du Soleil, but it's called theater and zany.

And I've been doing the show in Seattle, San Francisco, Amsterdam, the Chicago was, was that was the biggie.

We, I opened the venue in Chicago.

so it's it's a joyous it's a variety show and I'm the host, basically.

And, I've been doing it for over 20 years, thousands of performances.

So between The Groucho Show touring around the world, which is, you know, you know, in Australia and in Europe, and the Caesar character in theater and zany, I do a lot of interactive comedy.

So interactive comedy really is, is what I'm about and what I'm known for in those circles.

but I also have done voice work for SpongeBob SquarePants and Garfield and, and a lot of those jobs, Angela, come from friends of mine.

People or people see me on stage like, oh, you, I liked you.

I'd like you to do this.

So the work does beget work.

And, that's what's happened for me.

I, like I said, I direct, I love directing for the stage.

I like editing other people's material.

but it all started really with this love of this comedian, Groucho Marx.

Well, and from, you know, all the research I've done on, the Marx Brothers, they have this phenomenal work ethic.

And in the back of my mind, as you're telling me everything you're doing, it just seems like you have channeled some of that work ethic, because that's really important in this industry.

Absolutely.

You really hit on something that I've been thinking about a lot lately as well, Angela, because those people from that era, those performers of all walks of life in vaudeville and vaudeville, you could get into vaudeville if you were of color, if you were gay, you know.

You know, because it was open to all different types of people.

If you were Jewish, in the case of the Marx Brothers.

So there was no judgment.

Everyone had a shot as export.

I always think athletics and entertainment really allow a lot of us to a lot of people to come through a lot of talent to come through.

But point is, everyone worked really hard in that era because it was life or death.

The Marx Brothers came from poverty.

Most people come from, you know, from not a lot from low economic backgrounds and struggle.

And they did.

And but I believe in hard work.

And I played a lot of the theaters that the Marx Brothers played around the country.

But you say something about the hard work.

It's stamina.

I love what I do.

I've never missed a show in 37 years.

I've never been late for a show.

I mean, it's a certain work ethic.

you know, I'm in my 50s, but I can jump over couches still and kick my legs around and dance like Groucho Marx.

I can do what we call pratfalls, you know, fall, you know, take fall to the ground.

So I am, you know, I'm a I'm a I'm a theater guy.

I became friends with, Hal Holbrook, who had a one man show, the greatest one called Mark Twain tonight.

he worked for 62 years.

He's an Academy Award nominated for those who don't know, actor.

And one of the legends in in in acting.

He just passed away.

not too long ago.

But he was one of my heroes.

And we became friends in the last decade.

And, but when I was researching my one man Groucho show, his was the show I went to see because it was so well known.

having him and he was the granddaddy of the forum, and we became friends.

I saw him and he eventually saw my show in Los Angeles, and he he gave me some great advice.

He just said, keep it going, keep it going.

And, that's the great advice to someone, you know, I would he's he did his show for 62 years.

I'm shooting for 63 Angeles, so.

But back to what you're saying.

The worst actor that you have to work hard, you know, and, not everyone is a big star.

Not everyone is known.

I'm like this guy.

I always see myself as a working comic actor somewhere in the middle.

But, you know, I've had these great moments that just shined and.

But but I've always loved doing it.

I have such joy in doing it.

And I get to meet people.

I'm meeting you.

But when I when you travel like I do, you meet audiences.

You meet the, the Lyft drivers, you miss people, you meet people at the hotels and you know, who work there and restaurants and bars.

And so I have this extended community that comes from touring, that people like the Marx Brothers had.

And a lot of traveling performers have experienced these connecting with you with with your fellow person is a great thing.

And that's part of the joy.

And I love how you even mentioned before you were telling me this about the advice you received.

Keep it going.

So as we end our conversation today, I'm going to ask how Frank is keeping it going.

What's what's new on the horizon for you?

Well, thank you for asking.

I've got, I'm still touring with, my Groucho Show.

so I'm doing a smattering of those throughout the year.

having the public television, the PBS production of the show opens up a lot of possibilities.

And, so that's exciting.

And I continue to direct and regional theater places like the Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia.

And, I'll be working quite a bit in Chicago and in the Tatras and zany show.

Yeah.

So there's enough variety, to keep it exciting for me and fun for me.

Yeah, these these shows are not.

I'm not doing set shows or plays or musicals.

These are wildly fun, improv based show.

So that's what I'll be doing.

The same thing I've been doing, for the last so many years.

And you've been doing such a wonderful job at it, too.

And I'm so, so happy that now you have a home on PBS and it's the perfect station for what you've been doing.

Thank you.

Keep doing what you're doing and let us know what happens next, because we definitely want to keep talking to you, Frank.

I would love it.

Thank you.

Angela, take those chances.

Take care.

What's your name?

Peyton.

Peyton.

I'm Groucho.

Nice to meet you.

How do you do?

Come on, I want I want you to see what an audience looks like in Cincinnati.

Where are you from?

Trenton.

Trenton, new Jersey?

No, Ohio.

These are your people, Peyton.

Right over here.

That's it.

This is it.

And welcome to the stage.

that's, Miffy and Robert over there.

He's 96.

That's what you're going to look like in about 200 years.

Right over there.

That's a picture.

You've seen duck soup and a day at the races.

What do you what are your hobbies aside from seeing other films?

On a rare occasion, reading and reading The Last Reader right over here.

You're the one who last 14 year old read.

Folks, I can't do this show forever.

And I think I found my replacement right here in Cincinnati.

Ladies and gentlemen, Peyton.

Peyton.

I'll be.

Sending another round.

Peyton.

The assassination could trammel up the consequence and catch with his sassy success.

That.

But this blow might be the be all and end all.

Here.

But here, upon this bank and shoal of time.

We jump the life to come.

But in these cases we have judgment here.

That we would teach bloody instructions which being taught returned to plague the inventor.

This evenhanded justice offers the ingredients of our a poisoned chalice to our own lips.

He's here and double trust first, as I'm his kinsman and his subject strong both against the deed, then as his host, who should against his murderer shut the door, not bear the knife.

Myself.

Besides this Duncan hath borne his faculties so meek have been so clear in his great office, that his virtues will plead like Angel's trumpet tongued, against the deep damnation of his taking off.

So welcome back.

I'm here with Ben from the Shakespeare Center to discuss his live action graphic novel Macbeth.

Tell us a little bit about how you are reshaping Shakespeare.

Oh great question.

Thank you so much.

well, the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles is now 35 years old, and we've been, plugging away for quite some time in a very specific mode.

We've been really trying hard to look at Shakespeare's plays through a very specific lens.

And so our company has created a wonderful program called Will Power to Youth, where we hire cohorts of young people living, under very trying economic situations.

And we create youth adaptations of the Shakespeare plays that they write, that they build, that they perform as a job.

And we've been doing the same thing with chronically unemployed veterans.

We've been hiring veterans and training them how to work backstage on all of our different crews.

So the way we developed to the Shakespeare Center was or is to create an arts organization that also contributes tangibly to our community beyond just lifting people spirits through the art that we create, there are other ways that arts can have a big impact.

The most recent, thing that has happened with the Shakespeare Center, which has been incredible, is that the United States Department of Education has given us a $2 million grant for the next five years to create new curriculum for high school English teachers that extend the kind of work we've been doing in our job program, and training English teachers to use some of the tools and techniques that we've developed in our job program in their classrooms.

So we, called our good friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center, and we took workshops with them to look at the way we can interpret Shakespeare's plays so that they, challenge young people and the teachers to look at the plays through issues of identity.

And who am I in relationship to this play and to look at the plays through a lens of diversity, how our other people related to the themes in these plays, and then look at the plays through a lens of justice and the systems that have presented Shakespeare, that have interpreted Shakespeare, that have built Shakespeare's plays.

What are those systems that exist now in support of Shakespeare and then action?

How can we change those systems to make them even more accessible and more inclusive, particularly to young people in high schools and, middle schools throughout the United States?

So we're developing curriculum now with great support from the, Department of Education and many partners.

And the graphic novel which we developed, Macbeth, the live action graphic novel was one, example of the way we're really digging in to make Shakespeare more accessible to young people.

We illustrated the play with 200 illustrations.

We were able to get the Orthopedic Institute for children here, who has its own school system for kids who are in the hospital, to be one of our sponsors.

They were really excited about our approach to making this accessible to young people.

And, the National Endowment for the Arts and Shakespeare in American communities, these different entities, even local farmers, insurance, they're all jumping in to help us create this curriculum and these new modes of studying and understanding Shakespeare.

Because Shakespeare really wrote about three things.

You know, he wrote about power.

he wrote about intimacy.

Yes.

And he wrote about security.

What people need to feel safe, what they need to feel agency in their lives and what they need to feel connected.

And so we've been creating these educational materials that help young people and teachers explore the plays through these different lenses that really make the thing come alive in a different way for them.

And it looks like a, you know, it looks a little bit like Marvel comic heroes and stuff.

Like, oh, it's it's so great.

I mean, that you've actually been able to change the way that young people educate themselves about Macbeth just by giving them something that they're familiar with, but you're still educating them.

And that actually leads me to a question, because when people think of Shakespeare, they think two things.

One, it is entertainment because everyone loves the plays that are associated with Shakespeare.

But another part two, we all remember it from high school as it's part of the education systems help educate, but you actually bring in such an important component, social justice.

I mean, it's right in your face.

So how did how were you able to merge that?

Well, when we've been working with young people and hiring them to do Shakespeare for 28 years, and it became really clear from the onset that the way to make these plays resonate with young people is to tease out these themes of power and identity and all of that, and have them talk about these plays in relationship to their own lives.

And so they start looking at the play and seeing themselves in the play and start talking about what they feel and think about what these characters are doing and how they would do it differently.

And then we said, okay, now you write about it, now you write your version, now you perform your version.

And as we do that, and we develop the conversations and the techniques to draw young people out, it became very clear that these issues of social justice are what is foremost in their mind.

So we're we're trying to deliver Shakespeare in a way that's meaningful for them.

and to be honest, they're much more interested in social justice, and they are in Shakespeare.

So if we can align the two, then we're doing our mission to advance the understanding of these plays through that perspective.

And, I mean, I love how you've been able to merge those because based on Shakespeare, if you just look at what you're reading in high school or middle school, it's just it has one point of view.

But, I mean, Shakespeare can be that same book, can be in the suburbs somewhere or can be in the urban city.

And and there's differences there.

And so that's what I think, where Shakespeare Center comes into play, because you're able to see those different points of view and bring them together.

My understanding.

Yeah.

That's exactly you got it.

You know where we can bring these fresh perspectives to these plays, because we're listening to the young people that we're working with, and they tell us what they want and what they need.

When we started this program with the young people, we were going around doing focus groups and asking young people what they wanted most.

And they said to us, we want job, boys, and we want teachers who really care about us and are not just babysitters or authoritarians.

And we heard that all over the city of Los Angeles.

And so we decided we're going to create a job program with teaching artists who are so passionate and care so much about what they're teaching and who they're teaching, that will meet these needs that we discovered in the focus groups.

And that's how it really all began way back, you know, 28 years ago.

And it's just grown and grown.

And this affirmation with the $2 million grant from the Department of Education, just a wonderful opportunity for us to now share the information that we've developed here in Los Angeles on a much broader scale.

And we're partnering with theater companies in Washington, DC, in Brooklyn and San Diego and Houston, different theater companies that do Shakespeare and we're training teaching artists there to train the teachers in their communities so that we can really disseminate this wonderful information that we've developed and gleaned over the years that really bring Shakespeare into people's hearts in a very different way.

So I have a question for you, Ben.

because you mentioned how you're now bringing everything through this endowment, you know, across the country.

So in your mind, what is the one legacy that you would love for the Shakespeare Center to leave as you start to implant your knowledge into these theater groups in Washington, DC and Houston and and you mentioned other ones, too.

Those ones stuck in my mind.

But what was what was that legacy be?

It's a. Legacy.

I think it's a really good question.

and I appreciate it.

And I'm kind of thinking, I think what I would love most of all for the legacy for the Shakespeare Center would be that young high school and middle school age students from urban and suburban communities grow up thinking Shakespeare is about me.

That's what.

That's what I would like.

And so how can we, as educators and people who love Shakespeare or thespians, help you get to that next goal that leave that legacy?

Well, train with us and share the information.

I think that's the best way to do it, because we have so many great people now.

We have a woman named Ayanna Thompson from Arizona State University who created something called the Race Before Race Institute.

It's a whole cohort of Bipoc academics writing about race in the Renaissance.

No one knows about race in the rest, so she's the only person she's coordinated this, and we're taking a lot of the lessons that she's learning and infusing that into our curriculum development.

We've got a wonderful guy at Harvard University in charge of the Graduate School of Arts education, and they're working with us and, to create this curriculum and Southern Poverty Law Center.

It's such a great team of people that bring such a great perspective that the more people who come to share with us and then go back, because what I know is if you talk to people who love Shakespeare, they had a good high school teacher.

Yes.

And if you talk to people who hate Shakespeare, they had a bad high school teacher.

So it's all one.

the high school war.

so.

It's.

That sounds like that should be the the first thing that the Shakespeare Center does.

Is it make sure you're aligned like you're doing with those high school students.

So that they are a high school teacher, so they can instill that love.

So Shakespeare will live forever, but now will live in understanding social justice and how it relates to it.

Isn't it isn't that great?

And and well, sometimes we get high school teachers who say, oh, Shakespeare's too hard for my kids, but we bring in the kids that we've hired to do Shakespeare, and we have them do the trainings.

So the teachers cannot say to us, oh, it's too hard for our kids because the kids are training them.

So there are no excuses, no.

Excuses.

No excuses.

So as all of these English teachers get, they start planning for the next year and they know which Shakespeare play story they want to have their students read, they should contact you.

Yep.

Because you have a different way of teaching it that will last, right?

We have a way that it's going to resonate with their kids.

I love that.

Okay, so before I finish my conversation with you, you've already done this wonderful graphic novel, Macbeth.

Do you have any what's your next project?

Oh, no, I'm putting you on the spot.

No, you're not putting me on this.

What?

We're, We're working closely to, develop another graphic novel of a midsummer Night's Dream and, here in Los Angeles.

And, we're working with other theater companies to develop graphic novels based on productions that they're doing.

So we want to create a whole system of graphic novels that are supported by curriculum, that ask really important questions.

Oh man, after my own heart, start that series.

And when that next one is released, you definitely have to come back and talk about it, I promise.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Ben, and thank you for everything that you're doing.

And the Shakespeare Center is doing to bring Shakespeare to everyone so that they can feel they're part of it, too.

Thanks.

Thanks for giving me the platform.

My pleasure.

And thank you for joining us on Everybody with Angela Williamson.

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