This illuminated lecture brings together work from Dr. Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, Visiting Scholar at Portland State University and scholar-in-residence at the Portland Shakespeare Project, with readings of excerpts from Shakespeare's Merchant and other related materials. Dr. Pollack-Pelzner takes up the question: “Why perform The Merchant of Venice?" and discusses its production history, scholarship related to the work, and his own personal relationship to the play. 

This episode is presented in collaboration with the Shakespeare's First Folio: 1623-2023 Festival at Portland State University and was recorded live as part of the festival on October 26, 2023 during theatre dybbuk's residency in Portland, Oregon.

This is the second in a three episode series connected to concepts that intersect with theatre dybbuk's most recent theatrical work, The Merchant of Venice (Annotated), or In Sooth I Know Not Why I Am So Sad. That production combines text from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice with Elizabethan history and news from 2020 to the present. In doing so, it seeks to illuminate how, during times of upheaval, some people may place blame for their anxieties on an “other.”

This episode is supported in part by a grant from the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.