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The first time Simon Donoghue saw Michael Jordan - "whom I swear I did not know, except as a name" - Jordan shot past him, hung in the air for half an eternity, then dropped the ball silently through the net.
"I thought, human beings are supposed to be able to do that," Donoghue recalls. "At our best, that's what we can be.
"That's how I feel about William Shakespeare. All the things you'd ever want to say, he said so wonderfully. All the things it means to be a human being, he put in his plays."
That's why Donoghue is producing all 37 of those plays over three decades at Belmont Abbey College, where the 56-year-old director runs the drama program. When the Abbey Players open "The Merry Wives of Windsor" on Thursday, Donoghue will be 59.5 percent of the way toward achieving his ambitious goal.
He didn't have a 30-year plan when he staged his first Shakespearean play, "Richard III," in 1984, with a leading man (Paddy Hanner) who went on to write a thesis about that part. "He was wonderful, but it ran three hours and 20 minutes," Donoghue says. "A scholar said afterward, "'You know, Simon, people do cut these things occasionally.'"
The series started in earnest six years later, after the Haid Theatre opened. Donoghue gradually realized he could accomplish the task, given time. He had history behind him - "Othello" was performed at the Abbey decades before he came - and encouragement from theatrical mentors on staff at the Abbey, the Rev. John Oetgen and the Rev. Paschal Baumstein.
"Father Paschal was the best amateur actor I've seen," says Donoghue. "His attitude from the beginning was that, even if you do not achieve something, you must reach farther than you think you can, so that your reach will be greater next time.
"We had 30 years of fantastic conversations before his death in 2007. I've second-guessed this project over the years, but I think if I stopped now, Father Paschal would haunt me!"
Wisely and slow
Because Donoghue draws mainly (though not exclusively) from the student body, he waits to stage plays until someone makes sense in a role.
When he had two redheads who could pass for twins, he cast them as the Dromios in "The Comedy of Errors." When he had a suitable Olivia, he staged "Twelfth Night." Donoghue was able to entrust Romeo to son Christopher, now a working, 27-year-old actor. "You know when they're about to ripen on the vine," he says.
This approach can create problems: He's still waiting for someone resilient enough to play the marathon role of King Lear yet aged enough to look like that 80-year-old monarch.
"I always hoped Father John would do it, but he just smiled whenever I mentioned it," says Donoghue. Oetgen died last month, and the play hovers somewhere in the distance.
"Lear" and "Othello" are the great tragedies left to go. "I'm waiting for an African-American actor," he says. "There are people in the community who can do it, but they'd have to work for free and come to Belmont, which isn't the (trip to) Tibet that it used to be."
Still ahead are most of the histories; Donoghue would like to do the remaining ones in chronological order, maybe even devote an entire season to them for continuity's sake.
Ultimately, he'll have to overcome disinterest and do the rarely seen "Cymbeline" and "The Two Noble Kinsmen." (Don't know the latter? Shakespeare joined Fletcher in adapting the Knight's Tale from "The Canterbury Tales.")
The best productions excite discussions at rehearsals and performances: "The Merchant of Venice" got people talking about anti-Semitism, and a "Henry V" provoked parallels between that king's war with France and our own Iraq War.
Good lessons kept
No matter how shows turn out, there's something to learn.
"Merry Wives" is a bawdy farce, written because Queen Elizabeth asked for a comedy about fat Jack Falstaff after his supporting role in "Henry IV." (Think of it as the first stage prequel.) Yet even this bauble holds a few quotable gems.
Says Donoghue, "(The character of) Pistol is bragging, 'Why, then the world's mine oyster/Which I with sword will open.' And I thought, ' That's where it comes from.' There's always something like that with Shakespeare."
