"Every inch a king."

Last week, the Royal Shakespeare Company released a statement that Artistic Director Gregory Doran would be taking an immediate compassionate leave to care for his husband, Sir Antony Sher, who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness.

Some of you may remember a while back when I spent half a post fangirling over receiving a copy of a book written by Messrs. Sher and Doran which upon arrival revealed itself to be a copy signed by them both. This particular book came as part of a final push to obtain all published material by Sher—the result of a renewed interest in the creative process. There may also have been an underlying ennui spurred by my own nostalgia for certain portions of my college days when basically all I did was create all day...and, you know, throw some Pandemic Malaise in there for good measure. I was complimentary of Sher's work in that post. Enthusiastic. But that was the proverbial tip of the iceberg insofar as my regard for this truly remarkable man.

Year of the King, Sher's diaries kept during the duration of the RSC's 1984 production of Richard III in which he played the title role, was a revelation to college-me. Of course I was aware that creating a role was far more than learning the lines and delivering them in a convincing manner, but here was someone's process laid out piece by stumbling piece—but it was far more than that. It was a human being living a life while at the same time attempting to bring a whole other being into temporary existence with as much finesse as possible. There were intersections of life and work. There were setbacks. Dead ends. Eureka moments. Moments of personal turmoil coiled around professional successes in that seamless way that most of us exist through but don’t memorialize.

This was a life. An actual human life with all its idiosyncrasies. All its fears. All its dreams. Year of the King was, and is, so much more than dry, 'how I decided to play this character' procedural. It was over a year of Sher's soul written out in a tangible form. The sheer vulnerability of that was so astonishing, so exhilarating, so utterly terrifying to me that I was hooked. All I knew was that I had found something so radically different than everything they loved to shove down your throat in acting and dramatic theory classes that I wanted more of it. I first read this book twenty years after it was originally published. I went on a hunt for similar material by, well, anyone, and never found anything that struck as deep a chord with me as Antony Sher did.

From that time, my appreciation for Sher only deepened. I read and reread Year of the King. I sought out recordings of his performances (an activity which yielded lackluster results, it still being the early days of YouTube and other limitations such as the extent of library collections and region-coded video tapes/DVDs.) There were alternatives available and I devoured those even though none of them quite scratched the itch like Sher's book had. This was the point in my life where I was gearing up for my first year abroad in England, and I was determined to Shakespeare myself to death. I spent hours in the media center in the basement of U.C. Irvine's main library watching the Playing Shakespeare series the RSC had produced with the BBC in the early '80s. I discovered, through an acting professor, a book series published by the RSC called Players of Shakespeare which consisted of volumes of essays by actors on their personal processes in creating key roles—Sher has an essay in the second volume on his portrayal of the Fool in the 1982 production of King Lear, with Michael Gambon in the title role. Basically, if it had any connection whatsoever to the RSC, I had to have it.

I couldn't have asked for a better year to be in the thick of Shakespeare country. The RSC devoted their 2006/07 season to Shakespeare's complete works. Every play, every sonnet, every poem—all of it was produced in some form or other by the RSC and other international theatre companies in venues in either Stratford-upon-Avon or London, and for some productions, both. I tremble to think about how much I shelled out on theatre tickets and train tickets back and forth from Surrey to Stratford that year, but it was so very worth it. One of the last things I did before I had to return to the States to finish out my undergraduate degree was to attend the RSC's 2007 Open Day. It was a day full of workshops and talks and symposiums and all manner of other activities—think ComicCon, but for Shakespeare nerds. There was a football match between the houses of York and Lancaster (the casts of the Wars of the Roses plays) on the lawn outside the main RSC building. At one point, between talks, I happened to turn a corner and run bang into a queue for Cicely Berry, the RSCs most prominent vocal coach, to sign copies of her books. The highlight of the day for me, however, was the quiz at the end of it. Two teams of seasoned Shakespearean actors squaring off against each other in a Shakespeare trivia death match. (Okay, not a death match, but, y'know, it was exciting.)

I'll spare you the details, mostly because it was fourteen years ago and I can't remember them, but Antony Sher's team won. Between him, Judi Dench, and Donald Sinden, they had an almost grotesque amount of knowledge about the plays and the history surrounding them. This is where Sher blindsided me again. He went down a very particular and obscure rabbit hole of explanation while answering one of the questions, my jaw hit the floor, and I'm not sure it came up again until I was halfway home on the train that night. That, friends, is called scholarship, and it is something to be celebrated.

Fast forward a decent number of years, during which media became steadily more available. I read Sher's novels. I watched recordings of his productions. I kept a loose finger on the RSC pulse. My life took a more realistic turn and I sold out to corporate America in order to keep myself fed, but old habits die hard, and inside me there is still the twelve year old girl who got Sonnet 18 shoved into her hands by her elementary school theatre director, started reading aloud, and had a transformative experience right there in the multi-purpose room. Shakespeare is never too far from my mind.

In 2018, I made a visit to see my friends from my Royal Holloway year. The beauty of the situation was that one of those friends now lives in Stratford-upon-Avon, so I didn't even have to make a separate stop along the way—which I would have done if necessary. There's no way I'd skip it. In my research ahead of my trip, I had discovered—to my eternal delight—that there was an exhibition of a selection of Sher's art in the main RSC building that would coincide with my visit. There may have been squealing and jumping up and down. My Stratford friend in tow, I spent the better part of an hour in a room surrounded by Sher's original artwork. Some of the pieces I recognized. Some of them were new to me. All of them were incredible, and I was in heaven. Later that afternoon, we caught standing room tickets to see Christopher Eccleston and Niamh Cusack in Macbeth. It was a fabulous day.

I think at this point I've driven home my admiration for Sher, which is, of course, inextricably laced with my love of Shakespeare, so I'm going to circle back to where I started.

We're going to lose him.

It's not the kind of news a person is ready to see on their Twitter feed first thing in the morning. Obviously I understand how biology works, but it's always tough to face. You see, over the years, Sher has become far more to me than just words on a page, or characters on a stage or screen. I was talking to someone after the news of his illness broke, and they asked me to choose some words to describe him. My list was: industry (verb), persistence, artistry, scholarship, compassion, and vulnerability. Industry because everything he does has clearly been planned, thought out, and worked through until it's as close to perfect as it can get. And then he writes a book about it. Professionally, I suppose Sher’s persistence is a subset of his industry. He will tackle a problem from multiple angles until he’s satisfied that whatever it is is going to be comprehensible not only to him, but to his audience. Personally, Sher and his husband, RSC Artistic Director Greg Doran, are naturally huge supporters of LGBTQA+ rights, always pushing for inclusivity and equality. They were among some of the first couples to declare a civil partnership in the UK when that option was made available to them. They did eventually marry, years later, when that was finally legalized. Artistry and scholarship I've covered already, so we'll move on to compassion. Sher looks for the most human motivations in every role he takes on. King Richard III has been played up to everything short of a cartoon villain mustache in innumerable productions, but Sher sussed out the 'why' of it all and made it sympathetic—something not everyone who attempts the role manages to achieve. And yes, in the end Richard was still a jerk, but he was a jerk in the pursuit of a goal, and that is something that even if people find it distasteful, they can understand. In 1998 he played Leontes, King of Sicilia, in an RSC production of The Winter's Tale—a tricky role for actors. Leontes turns on a dime from doting husband to raving lunatic, and Sher made that accessible. He made it make sense. He consulted a laundry list of mental health professionals to do it, but he did it. He found the humanity, and that is the most compassionate thing a person can do, even when the object isn't actually a person, but a made up character.

Vulnerability. Oof. That's a biggie. Suffering from a severe aversion to this particular emotional offering myself, I'm always impressed by it in others. Sher could have written his books—fictional and not—from a detached place, a place at arm's length. He didn't. There is so much of him in all of them. I'm not talking about a little sprinkling of anecdotes, I'm talking about chapters devoted to his sister's illness and death. First-hand perspective on the Jewish South African experience. His relationship with his husband. The intersections of upbringing and culture and sexuality and art. The incessant ramblings of his own rabid brain weasels. All of it. On the page. Either directly from him in his autobiographical works, or through the characters he's created in his novels and plays, but still ultimately there.

What this all boils down to is the fact that, in a way, I've spent a lot of time with a person I've never actually met. I have enjoyed every minute of it. I'm invested in Sher as a person, not just a source of entertainment, and I have been for a long time. He embodies everything I have ever wanted to be as an artist and more. He has given me so much. He has moved me. Made me laugh. Made me think. Consoled me. Encouraged me. Inspired me.

And now I know the days of us existing under the same sky are numbered, and it's breaking my heart.

I'm losing my Shakespeare Dad. I'm not ready for this.