Richard III in Theatre. "Dark Sovereign"

Responding to the post by "david a. sigler" dasigler@... of
Friday Jan 04:
David asks: "Has there ever been a play that portrays Richard as he
actually was?

Yes, there has been, and I wrote it. Its name is "Dark Sovereign" (dark,
as in dark horse). It took me four years to read the lit., thread a path
through the gathered info and confusion, and write "Dark Sovereign" in
English as it stood in the high Renaissance (Shakespeare's English).
That took 45 hours a week for 4 years of investigative journalism and
studies in Renaissance English on top of my regular job, which at that
time involved (you guessed it) investigative journalism. I was then the
series producer, putting together the weekly package for CBC-TV's "the
fifth estate" series, the equivalent of "Panorama" (U.K.) or "60
Minutes" (U.S.).

You can find a lot of information on my web site: Go to
http://RobertFripp.ca/ and click "Dark Sovereign." The site gives a
number of essays about the background to "Dark Sovereign," plus 20 pages
of excerpted text with Arden-style footnotes, and a section called "Some
Comments", giving fine reviews of the text by a number of people in
positions to know.

A couple of years ago, several actors with personal ties to the U.S.
Richard III Society helped me to give an after-dinner reading at that
Society's AGM in Chicago. My talk/performance lasted on hour and was
well-received. Indeed, the excerpts you will find on my site are similar
to the clips I prepared for the reading in Chicago.

In 1998 I had a particularly tough and effective agent: Jennifer Watts
got the complete play read at a two-day workshop with a fine cast of 12
from the Stratford Festival, Stratford, Ontario, under the direction of
John Wood. Members of the cast were impressed at the ease with which
Renaissance English lifted off the page at first sight for them
(experienced Shakespearean actors), never mind at first reading. A
subsequent argument involving agent, director and artistic director
killed any chance for a performance at that time -- and my agent
subsequently died of MS.

If anyone can recommend a British-based play agent with enough guts to
fight the Shakespeare establishment for a spot on a stage, please let me
know.

Robert Fripp