The Stage

Bringing the Bard to life

Published Monday 4 January 2010 at 16:35

Equity members are putting on a really big national Shakespeare jamboree. Originally it was a plan to have the first ever historic Shakespeare celebration - a stand alone event. Government and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport discussed it and liked it very much, responding very positively. But it didn’t seem to them viable as a free-standing idea. But if, they suggested, we could link it to the Olympic bid in 2012, they would support it. So there’s to be an International Shakespeare Festival as part of the Olympics.

In the run up we are organising a grassroots network spread across the country - tapping into local theatres and trying to persuade them to do, say, three professional plays - a comedy, a tragedy and a history. We are also inviting variety branches to take up the challenge and do something truly inventive with the idea of celebrating Shakespeare.

On the professional amateur side, we are talking to councils, local arts authorities and education officers, with the idea of bringing Shakespeare to the nation. To further this project, the steering committee is seeking to appoint Shakespeare champions, who can talk to and promote the idea to local theatres, colleges, schools, etc.

Ian Flintoff, whose brainchild is S2012, particularly wants to see local schools and small theatres take up the challenge and do something really inventive with the idea of celebrating Shakespeare. He said: “Make Shakespeare such fun, so different, that it takes that feeling of elitism and the idea that it’s just a school subject away from the plays.” For example, one of the most refreshing way into Shakespeare for ‘non-believers’ is a current makeover of Julius Caesar in chatter, rap and text-talk. Entitled Wasted, it is currently being performed by Intermission[1], a youth theatre group based in Knightsbridge that works with young people who have committed crimes or are at risk of getting into trouble, who have cleverly reinvented the play as a tale of urban violence by rewriting the script into street slang. Instead of adults in the Roman court, it is set in the classroom and all the teenage actors wear uniform. Trouble begins when Caesar moves from Harvey Nicks Grove School to nearby Harrods High, where he is marked out as a threat for wanting to become head prefect and is knifed to death.

On the pro-am side, I am co-ordinating a nationwide pastiche of the TV spectacular Shakespeare has Talent, in which every competitor performs something of a Shakespearean nature. Entrants can tumble, street dance, sword fight, juggle, sing a sonnet, play an instrument, sing, dance, clown, even act or mime a scene out of Shakespeare. Anything truly inventive. I am particularly seeking bands capable of rearranging the music of sonnets into a Tudor Top of the Pops number or musicians who own and play a Tudor instrument. A sort of 17th-century palace of varieties. The best will perform at London’s Globe Theatre during the Olympics 2012. See below for entry forms.

Meanwhile, professionals who wish to be involved in our pilot production led exclusively by Equity members, that is, a One Day Shakespeare United - The Equity Members Initiative - is planned for April 24. On this day, something Shakespearean is to be performed everywhere and anywhere - train, bus and tube stations, museums and galleries, parks, circuses, squares, gardens, docks, street corners, precincts, outside supermarkets, schools, chapels, churches and Town halls - you name it.

Let’s be hearing from you.

For more information contact Faith Hines on hinescript@telco4u.net or shakespeare2012@aol.com

Faith Hines

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