Margaret Holloway

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Margaret Holloway, nicknamed "The Shakespeare Lady", is a street performer in Downtown New Haven, Connecticut. Her life was the subject of a 2001 15-minute documentary film, "God Didn't Give Me A Week's Notice". She was also featured in the "Local Characters" trading card set of New Haven personalities.

1 Background
2 Mental condition
3 Material
4 Bibliography

[edit] Background

Margaret Holloway was born on 7 September 1951 in Albany, Georgia, to a minister and his homemaker wife.

In 1974 she received a bachelor's degree in acting from Bennington College. Thereafter, she attended acting classes at the Yale School of Drama. While there, she says she met Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken and Sigourney Weaver. She dropped out a month into her first semester, after allegedly experiencing racially biased casting. She later went back to Bennington, acquiring a master's degree in directing and dramatic literature. Holloway returned to Yale in 1977, enrolling in the directing program. She then claimed to have experienced greater racism than before, because of involvement in an interracial relationship. She earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in 1980, writing an 11-page thesis entitled "God's Smoke: A Thesis Production", discussing her theory of the "theater of hunger" in which "schizophrenia is a means of survival." Toward the end of her time at the Drama School, symptoms of a rare form of schizophrenia manifested.

[edit] Mental condition

Holloway's descent into schizophrenia is largely undocumented; she claims to have been raped and physically abused several times, including an incident by family members in 1983. Though admitting to marijuana use at Drama School, reports conflict on whether she continues to use drugs. Rumors claim that the catalyst for her condition was a bizarre reaction to antibiotics. [1] She says that she suffers from tardive dyskinesia as result of side-effects from her schizophrenia medication.

Holloway tried acting through the 1980s, authoring four plays; these include 1985's "A Rock Music Fantasy of Philae", which she hoped would be produced by the late Bob Breen. During and since this period, she has frequently been homeless.

She was arrested in 2002 for blocking the entrance to a restaurant. Margaret was jailed four times in 2004 for disturbing the peace and trespassing, and no longer performs on streets for fear of being arrested.

She is an acquaintance of many downtown New Haven regulars, including Mayor John DeStefano.

[edit] Material

The Shakespeare Lady's repertoire includes Chaucer, Euripides, and Shakespeare, as well as the occasional Richard Pryor joke. She discusses physics, geology and math.

Margaret's favorite material is Hamlet, though her favorite quotes are from Robinson Jeffers' adaptation of Euripides' Medea- Medea's speech to Jason: "What! feeble night-bird overcome by misfortunes beats at my door!? Can this be that great adventurer, the famous lord of the seas and delight of women, the heir of rich Corinth - this crying drunkard on the dark doorstep? - Yet you've not had enough! You have come to drink the last bitter drops. I'll pour them for you."