One of the reasons Shakespeare’s plays have remained so popular for so long is their ability to be adapted to the context of the time. While the text and the story lines remain the same, in many instances over the twentieth and twenty first century the Shakespearean performances that have and are being produced bare very little resemblance to one another, and yet neither presentation of each play can be said to be “wrong”. It is stated that Shakespeare was ‘a man before his time’, and that by simply moving his characters into our century we can see his predictions of the future from when he was alive. Whether or not one agree’s with this statement it is clear that Shakespeare has been done and redone over the ages. So is it a challenge for us to recontextualise Shakespeare’s texts, or are we conforming to the norm of the time?
I would suggest that while we are indeed following in the footsteps of many directors and producers, we may find this task more challenging than our predecessors. This is not only because reinterpreting words that are no longer part of our day to day language can be a challenge for the mind, but is also partly because a plethora of “reinterpretations” have already been produced and presented, thus potentially limiting our claim to originality. Well, challenge accepted.
Having collected a number of texts which we believed could be altered or reinterpreted we shared and discussed our ideas before handing the baton over to our director. Having taken on board our (the performers) creative ideas she refined the texts and combined them with her own creative vision for our Shakespeare scenes. Yes! There are more than one! Without indulging too much detail, so as not to ruin the surprise, I can tell you that we have dialogues made out of monologues, monologues made out of sonnets and soliloquy presented in a way that we at least have never experienced before.
“If it were done when tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly” (Shakespeare, Act 1, Scene 7 Line )
Picture by Kirsty Jakins, 2014