Professor David Peimer
Julius Caesar: Conqueror of Gaul
Summary
Professor David Peimer explores the life, writings, leadership, and dictatorship of Julius Caesar. Specifically he focuses on the cultural commentaries that Caesar wrote that give us an idea of his broader cultural and intellectual curiosity and interest in other people’s customs of religions, of marriage, of family, of structure, of communities, technology, science, and warfare.
Professor David Peimer
David Peimer is a professor of theatre and performance studies in the UK. He has taught at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and New York University (Global Division), and was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University. Born in South Africa, David has won numerous awards for playwriting and directing. He has written eleven plays and directed forty in places like South Africa, New York, Brussels, London, Berlin, Zulu Kingdom, Athens, and more. His writing has been published widely and he is the editor of Armed Response: Plays from South Africa (2009) and the interactive digital book Theatre in the Camps (2012). He is on the board of the Pinter Centre in London.
Well, it’s similar to what I was trying to say here. You know, that, is he trying to set himself up as a tyrant-type dictator, or a more benevolent dictator, who is not just loved by the people, but who’s really trying to make decisions in the interest of the people? Is he trying to go against a small elite group of aristocrats who mostly bribe their way in to be voted onto the Senate? Is he trying to do a military coup d'etat, and take over? I think Shakespeare tries to capture all of this in the play. And hence, he does have that, for example, the will is very important. Mark Antony’s great speech, where he reads that he’s left a huge amount of land and money to the ordinary people of Rome, and, you know, all the other reforms. So, I think that the ambiguity is captured there, because also, Brutus, who is one of the closest generals to Caesar, ultimately leads the assassination, and Brutus and Cassius did actually go through Rome, proclaiming, “People of Rome, we are free, we are free!”