Conquering the Canon

Want to read some pre-show questions with Michael Hagins? Check them out here!

Shakespeare can be really hard for people.  Elizabethan English can be hard to follow…twisted plots and relationships can be hard to grasp.  But there are people out there (myself included) who love Shakespeare.  Yeah, we’re Shakespeare nerds.  And one of the most amazing ones I’ve ever met, and had the pleasure to see on stage, was Michael Hagins.  He’s someone who has a firm grasp on Shakespeare.  He’s been working on it for a good chunk of his life.  But the most important, and impressive thing about Michael is that he is the only African-American man to have done the entire Shakespeare Canon.

The Shakespeare Canon is the entirety of plays written by Shakespeare.  There’s a lot of them, especially when you count in the ones that people aren’t sure were actually written by Shakespeare or are earlier versions of what later became known shows.  And there’s forty of them!  I’ve done a lot of Shakespeare in my time, but Michael has gone above and beyond.  He has either acted in, directed, or choreographed fights for every show in the Shakespeare Canon.  And he did them all by the time he was forty.  Michael has done so much for so many communities.  He knows this…thank goodness.

Here’s some quick background information on Michael Hagins.  He was adopted, and lived in Florida.  He never made it into the shows there, so he went up to NYC to try that.  And it was a success.  Above all, he knew he loved Shakespeare the most.  He started getting roles in plays.  He learned the art of fight choreography.  He even directed.  But obviously, things can’t always be perfect.  In Conquering the Canon, Michael really gives us some heartfelt background into his life.  It was really beautiful.  I’m not sure exactly when I fell in love with this show, but I think this was when I realized I hadn’t blinked since the start.

As many of us theatre people, Michael knew he was different.  But it goes even beyond being a theatre person.  Michael had a lot of things to fight for.  He was Black in a world where there weren’t a lot of Black people doing what he did.  He was very unlucky when it came to relationships, and kind of gave up on that.  Something major he had to fight for was besting his stutter.  But all these things clearly made Michael an incredible person.  He never gave up, he never let anything get him down.  Even tragic moments throughout his life made him a better person.  He was absolutely inspiring.

But along with that sort of thing, there’s a lot more.  A theme that ran beautifully throughout Conquering the Canon was validation.  We see this from the very start of Michael’s journey.  Honestly?  I was a little heartbroken by the whole thing.  I understand that need for validation.  Michael’s words about that really captured me, because he spoke about it so eloquently.  It wasn’t something happy to talk about, but the way he wrote it made me understand it.  The need to be validated by your parents.  Your peers.  Your fellow theatre folk.  The world around you.  This is definitely where we saw Michael’s fight again.

All of this made Michael so strong and brave…and maybe a little crazy.  Eight months before he turned forty, he realized that there were only eight plays that were keeping him from completing Shakespeare’s Canon.  So he decided to do those eight plays in eight months so he could “Conquer the Canon” by forty.  The super incredible thing was that he made it work.  He had the people, he had the crew, he had everything and everyone he needed to do what he wanted to do.  Unfortunately, money is a thing.  But thank goodness this didn’t deter Michael.  He did stage readings for all of the shows, and that strange, nerdy kid did something that no other African-American man had done.  He had conquered the Shakespeare Canon.  I’m going to let you sit with that for a bit, because this is a beyond huge feat.  This is major bragging rights.  This is a sense of accomplishment that you write one-man shows about.  Which is exactly what Michael did.

There’s so much to say about how Michael’s life intertwined so much with Shakespeare.  He kept going with shows, having been a part of many of them multiple times.  He’s done a Shakespeare bracket (like a sports bracket!  It came down to Macbeth and Twelfth Night, and Macbeth won!)  He wrote this one-man show that was so stunning, and made me feel so much, especially as another Shakespeare nerd.  But I think in some ways, Michael’s love of Shakespeare also perpetuated his need for validation.  All of it was so woven together, and there were parts where it was hard to separate his love of Shakespeare from needing that validation.

Conquering the Canon is probably one of my favorite one-person shows I’ve ever seen.  It’s about being a Shakespeare nerd, but even beyond that.  It’s love, and openness, and pain, and so many raw emotions.  I love Shakespeare, and I could never imagine accomplishing something like this.  But Michael Hagins did it.  He did it as an African-American man.  As someone who loves all the arts of theatre.  As someone who did what so many people could never do.  This show was so beautiful and intense, and gave me a lot to think about.  Just like walking away from a Shakespeare play.