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I had been in a Shakespeare company for three years and done a lot of Shakespeare. That was fun. That was interesting.

I had always wanted to retell a Shakespeare play. It was an ambition from college days. But in order to be able to do it... the circumstances in my life didn't come together for a long time.

Shakespeare is rich and beautiful, and it can be an amazing experience to read and to watch and to work on.

The thing that I had saved up for myself and wanted most to bring off was a fully fledged professional production of Hamlet at the Royal Shakespeare Theater in Stratford.

I believe that it is a whole lifetime of work on Shakespeare's part that enabled him to do what he did. But the question is how you can explain this whole lifetime in such a way to make it accessible and available to us, to me.

Immersing myself in Shakespeare's plays, reading them closely under the guidance of a brilliant, plain-spoken professor changed my life: It opened up the great questions; it put my petty problems into perspective. It got me out of bed in the mornings and kept me in the library late into the night.

I've been with Shakespeare all my life.

I grew up with Shakespeare, and there are so many wonderful teachings in those plays. The stories are all so unique and timeless. There is just so much learning in that body of work, and that is something I will always go back to.

Reading the play at home, however fulfilling, can never be the vivacious experience that Shakespeare intended.

It's what Shakespeare's mission was - to illuminate our thoughts and struggles and bring about the possibility of getting the most we can out of a day as opposed to least in this brief moment we're here.