Birmingham-born actor Adrian Lester is back in his home city this month to unveil a historic copy of the First Folio - the first collected volume of Shakespeare’s plays, which is this year celebrating its 400th anniversary. Here, Adrian chats to What’s On about the Folio, the Bard, and his own introduction to the works of the world’s greatest-ever playwright...

Actor & director Adrian Lester was a member of Birmingham Youth Theatre when he first discovered Shakespeare - and it opened up a whole new world for him. In plays written centuries ago, he found all of human experience.
Birmingham-born Adrian has since gone on to build a hugely successful career on both stage and screen, from long-running television series Hustle, to Shakespeare’s Henry V and Hamlet. And he’s keen to share this enthusiasm for the Bard with his fellow Brummies.

Adrian is the patron of the ‘Everything To Everybody Project’, an initiative aiming to raise awareness of Birmingham’s unique Shakespeare Memorial Library, which contains, among thousands of other Bard-related artefacts, a historic copy of the 1623 First Folio - the first collected volume of Shakespeare’s plays.
“It was Derek Nicholls at Birmingham Youth Theatre who introduced me to Shakespeare,” Adrian recalls. “He knew I wanted to be an actor and that I hadn’t read Shakespeare, so he gave me a copy of Measure For Measure to read - and at the same time he gave me a copy of a Shakespeare glossary. 
“He said ‘Start slowly, and when you come to a word you don’t understand, look it up and then come back to the play.’ It took me about a week to read that play, and then I understood what Shakespeare was like. 
“People say Shakespeare uses too many words, but once people understand how many ideas he’s fitting into one sentence, they realise he’s using too few words! Because in one speech is everything.”

The ‘Everything To Everybody Project’ has toured the First Folio to communities across Birmingham, sharing Shakespeare with people in museums, libraries, shopping centres and even Winson Green Prison. Although the collected volume of plays is this year celebrating its 400th anniversary, Adrian says it very much speaks to today.
“It’s not just about taking this book around to show people; it’s looking at it through the access to stories, the access to understanding human nature, how the plays were performed. 
“It’s understanding the way Shakespeare galvanised people to understand storytelling, and it’s recognising its influence today. I mean, look at The Lion King - it’s a retelling of Hamlet - or some of the best television programmes, like Succession or Breaking Bad. People constantly say a show is ‘Shakespearian’ in character because how Shakespeare presents a character is uniquely Shakespearian. 
“When they speak in soliloquy, the character is caught in a moment of time and their character is developed as they speak. And at that moment, you see how a character who you thought was one thing - and they thought they were one thing - suddenly shifts and twists and changes in front of you. And that is Shakespeare’s brilliance. It’s the essence of human nature.”

Adrian will be unveiling the First Folio at a celebration event for Everything To Everybody, taking place at Bullring and Grand Central on Saturday 21 October. People will have the chance to view the book and also take part in a range of activities.
“There’s going to be singing, drummers, music, people speaking Shakespeare in different languages, Stan’s Café theatre company and DESIBlitz. It’s the idea that you start with the words and then it becomes a melting pot of expression, and we’ll see how this or that came from the book. If I was doing an animation, you’d open this book and what flies out of it and comes to life is Hollywood movies, operas, ballets, paintings - in fact, everything.”
The Birmingham First Folio is unique in the world because it was given to the people of Birmingham by George Dawson in 1881 after he founded the Shakespeare Memorial Library. One of only 235 First Folios currently known to exist, it is the only one which belongs to the people of a city.
And that matters, says Adrian.
“The fact that it belongs to everybody, the people of Birmingham, is so important. The idea that it sits in the library and no one knows about it is what the ‘Everything To Everybody Project’ is aiming to change. Professor Ewan Fernie at the University of Birmingham, who is the project director, and the team at the library just thought ‘We have to do something about it, we have to shout about it,’ and they got me on board.
“It’s a free library. You walk in and you look, and you should have access simply because you were born here; simply because it was prepared for you; simply because someone wrote it and said ‘I want people to read this.’ If you want to own it, then you should pay for it, but if you want to have access to it, to simply exist in the same space as the work, then it should be free. We’re talking about classical work. Talent doesn’t sit behind a paywall.”
That spirit of social philanthropy not only inspires Adrian but changed his life.
“I am the result of an Everything To Everybody ethos. I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy the dancefloors at Midlands Arts Centre if they didn’t keep the doors open to a young man who couldn’t afford to get in. The Birmingham Youth Theatre would not have been there if that ethos wasn’t true. There wouldn’t have been access to drama schools, RADA or wherever. The idea that councils saw that you got in and then gave you a grant to go and train wouldn’t have existed. I wouldn’t be where I am today if various structures and various funding bodies did not exist to make sure that the people who walked through the door could be supported. They simply had to have the interest and the talent - and nothing else.”

The ‘Everything To Everybody Project’ celebration takes place at Bullring & Grand Central on Saturday 21 October between 11am and 4pm. Further information can be found at everythingtoeverybody.bham.ac.uk