A modern face to Shakespeare’s roles
O BRAVE new world, that has such people in it.
Many of William Shakespeare’s plays were written with strong female characters, but ‘‘in the day’’ those characters were often performed on stage by boys or men.
So it seems appropriate the annual Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand (SGCNZ) National Shakespeare Schools Production in Dunedin this week, celebrated the 125th anniversary of the Women’s Suffrage Movement by performing plays with his strongest female characters — played by female actors.
‘‘We are also doing the reverse and having some of the men’s roles played by women,’’ SGCNZ chief executive Dawn Sanders said.
Scenes from Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Taming of the Shrew and Antony and Cleopatra were performed at the University of Otago’s College of Education auditorium last night, and will be repeated again tonight at 7.30.
Sophie Baron (Columba College), Isabella Jack (Wakatipu High School), Amy Lee (James Hargest College), Chloe Robertson (Queen’s High School) and Quinn Hardie (Logan Park High School) are among the 46 secondary school pupils from across the country, chosen to participate.
They have spent the past week participating in workshops and rehearsals with high calibre tutors, and their performances have been boosted by contributions from the winners of the SGCNZ Costume Design Competition and Music Composition Competition.
They are all vying to be selected as part of a smaller group who will travel to England next year, to perform in the Globe Theatre, the home of Shakespeare.