Actor Terence Knapp is one of Hawaii's treasures. He is retired now and has time to devote to some pet projects.
There's a good reason for that - Terence Knapp will be reading from a paper prepared by a friend of his, a jesuit scholar.
"I became entirely magicked by what I was reading. The supposition is that shakespeare, as it were, was a closet catholic all his life," said Knapp.
knapp told me the paper is titled Shakespeare's passion play. Father Peter Milward, who wrote the piece, is considered an expert on shakespeare and catholicism and through his study, found threads of catholic theology in Shakespeare's plays - near heresy when the Anglican Church ruled Elizabethan England.
"Through the plays, especially the great tragedies of othello, macbeth, and king lear, you trace the passion and death of christ."
Knapp's performance is set for 7pm this Saturday night in the intimate setting of Newman Hall at the catholic center on the UH Manoa Campus.
"I just take enormous pleasure in reading it and in sharing it with other people, so this was a good place to bring it obviously," he said.
In this excerpt, just a brief glimpse of a scholar - and actor - at work.
"Othello exclaims 'o, insupportable. O, heavy hour,' recalling the words of Jesus in the garden of gethsemene first to his disciples, 'my soul is heavy even unto death' and then to his enemies, this is your very hour and the power of darkness.'"