The World Shakespeare Festival 2012 will soon be underway. It is a treasure trove of odd and interesting interpretations of Shakespeare plays.

The festival will nit together work from companies all over the World, but one curious cultural highlight for me will be Romeo and Juliet in Baghdad. The show promises to be packed with Iraq's rich tradition of poetry, music and ritual ... right up my street. 

The Montague-Capulet  feud will centre around the sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shias. I think this will be one of the most resonant works in the World Shakespeare Festival and really demonstrates what this festival is all about: Shakespeare isn't a cultural commodity that is owned by the English, the West, or the English speaking world. Rather, he belongs to everyone. His themes align with all cultures and times.

How fitting that Romeo and Juliet can still say something about tensions in the Middle East four centuries after it was written in London.

Romeo and Juliet in Baghdad will be on at the RSC's Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon between 26 April and 5 May 2012.

I know - I also had a double-take when I read this headline! A few years ago, Arizona imposed a ban on ethnic studies in its state schools and one of the texts repressed is Shakespeare's The Tempest.

The Tempest is one of Shakespeare's most magical plays crammed full of heart-melting poetry - hardly a text that, as the new law states, promotes "the overthrow of the United States government, promote resentment toward a race or class of people, are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals."

What!?! The Tempest? Some narrow minded pen-pusher in Arizona is depriving students of Shakespeare at his most magical. Certainly the play raises moral issues surrounding colonisation - but isn't this what we read, teach and love Shakespeare for? Big-issue debates are central in all of the Bard's plays.

Moreover, isn't this what culture is for? Is Arizona really depriving its young of culture?

Idiots.

Happy New Year one and all!

Just a quick blog post before the year is out to let you know that you can read the original text to Romeo and Juliet on the site now! I hope this will be a useful edition to your study tools.

• Act One: Prologue / Scene 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5
• Act Two: Scene 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5
• Act Three: Scene 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5
• Act Four: Scene 1, 2, 3 and 4
• Act Five: Scene 1, 2 and 3

I've also started work on Hamlet (Act One, Scenes 1, 2, 3 and 4), but more on that in 2012!

Happy New Year ... I trust you will celebrate in style?

Well, Christmas is here again - but Shakespeare is surprizingly light on Festive quotes. However, here's my top Shakespearean Christmas quotation from Love's Labours Lost:

At Christmas I no more desire a rose
Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled mirth;
But like of each thing that in season grows.

This passage might seem out of context for readers living in warmer climates. For me in the UK, as I stare at the ice creeping up my office window, it makes perfect sense. Let's enjoy winter for its festive cheer, and spring for its mirth.

Merry Christmas everyone. I hope Santa is kind to you.