Theatre icon John Bell turns to the Bard once more for this year’s Boyer Lectures

Actor and theatre director John Bell will deliver this year’s Boyer Lectures for the ABC.

Actor and theatre director John Bell. Picture: John Feder

“I was pretty thunderstruck, actually.” So says actor and theatre ­director John Bell about receiving “a cold call from Ita” – as in Buttrose – asking if he would be interested in giving this year’s Boyer Lectures.

“I was immensely flattered,” says Bell, in a measured, patrician tone. “They have a wonderful tradition. I was a bit daunted, but as it happened during lockdown, I could not say I had too much on, and happily accepted.”

Bell says Buttrose told him he could talk about “anything you like”.

As you like it, then? Of course, he chose Shakespeare. “I don’t know anything as well,” Bell tells The Australian, and since the Boyer Lectures – a series of lectures by prominent Australians, presented annually since 1959 – are meant to engage the audience over the course of the month, “I’m not going to talk about inter­national relations. I’ll leave that to the experts.

“I knew that Shakespeare would not be agonising for me. It’s a subject I do love very much, and I wanted to convey my enthusiasm. So it was not at all a chore. My main worry was, will it be good enough? And I wanted to make it relevant.”

To that end, Bell will apply lessons from the Bard to the pandemic, the #MeToo movement, and political populism.

“I’ve walked side-by-side with William Shakespeare for over 60 years and his work has come to mean for me a sort of secular Bible,” Bell says. “He has taught me lessons in empathy, ambition, forgiveness, leadership, the power of language and a deeper understanding of myself.”

Bell co-founded Sydney’s Nimrod Theatre in 1970 with an ­emphasis on new Australian writing, but he made sure to include a Shakespeare play every season. He later created the Bell Shakespeare Company, taking the works across the continent and into schools.

Like every artist ever, he ­despairs at the state of the arts these days. “The Australian federal government is actively discouraging university students from engaging with the humanities by hiking up the fees,” Bell will say in one lecture.

“Theatre studies courses are disappearing from our campuses. Shakespeare is increasingly ­becoming a specialised study at both a secondary and tertiary level, and our state theatre companies are performing one of his plays every couple of years, if that.

“So, in the Boyer series, I want to encourage a greater awareness of Shakespeare, a reminder of his profound effect on the way we think, speak and see the world, even when we don’t realise it.”

He says the telling of stories is an important part of the child’s emotional and psychological ­development and creates a special bond between the storyteller and the listener. “I wonder if the telling of bedtime stories is as prevalent as it used to be or is it easier now to flick on the telly?” he says.

“To my mind, we’re not doing enough to drag them away from screens. Teachers and students might disagree. The curriculum is now so crowded. To try to fit any more literature in, it’s so difficult. In the 1950s, we studied Shakespeare for five years. These days, they might do scenes, or themes. But you can’t just touch on Shakespeare lightly.”

He will argue that Shakespeare was more than a poet and more than a storyteller. He was a “significant philosopher and social commentator as well, one who grapples with the existential and ethical questions that still challenge us today”.

“By engaging deeply with him, we come to a better understanding of ourselves, and our potential to be greater than we are,” he says.

The first in this year’s Boyer Lectures series will be broadcast on ABC TV on Saturday at 12.30pm, and all four will be broadcast on Radio National each Sunday throughout November.