Audition time for ‘As You Like It’
There will be auditions for Port Elizabeth’s annual Shakespeare in the park – As You Like It at Mannville Open-Air Theatre from March 5 to 16 – on Saturday at 2.30pm.
Vibrant new director Jacques Batista said he was hoping to cast as many young people as possible in “an exciting and fun version” of one of the playwright’s most enduring comedies.
William Shakespeare wrote As You Like It in 1599 and the story of several tangled young love lives has over the years been adapted for radio, film and musical theatre.
Collegiate Girls High School drama teacher Batista knows the turf well and was himself on the Mannville stage as the Showtime award-winning Benedick in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing in 2017.
Batista said prospective cast members need not prepare anything ahead of the auditions, but should bring their own water.
As he has just completed a physical theatre course in Brus- sels, a PE Shakespeare Festival (PESF) spokesperson said under Batista’s direction “we can look forward to much buffoonery and fun physicalisation in this production”.
2019 marks the 50th year of an annual Shakespeare play being presented in the city, with the first production held in Happy Valley before Mannville opened in Park Drive in 1972.
Some productions have been in the Opera House, others at Fort Frederick, at the Boardwalk Amphitheatre one year and also at Pemads, but all have been under the banner of the PESF Mannville.
The gate to enter St George’s Park to get to Mannville is opposite St George’s Hospital in Park Drive.
● Further information from Batista, 082-308-9746.