The show must goon
Manawatu¯ theatre students entered in a national Shakespeare festival are getting used to performing in front of a camera, rather than an audience.
The Shakespeare Globe Centrenew Zealand Festival encourages schools to perform scenes from Shakespeare plays. Though physical events have been cancelled due to Covid-19, the festival is continuing, with schools this week recording performances to send in for assessment.
The Manawatu¯-whanganui event was going to be at Feilding High School on April 5, before being canned.
Feilding High School, Awatapu College and Palmerston North Boys’ High School have entered from Manawatu¯.
Boys’ High is entering two scenes from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, one directed by teacher Philip Mills and another directed by student Caleb Rayner.
Rayner, 17, has done directing work previously, but was also playing Sir Andrew Aguecheek.
He said the group had only a couple of weeks since school returned to prepare and it had taken a lot of work to learn the lines and their context. ‘‘It’s a little bit different since coronavirus took a bit of our time away,’’ Rayner said. ‘‘But we’ve managed to put it together.’’
He said it was better to perform in front of people than in front of a camera because an audience would react and get involved.
Awatapu is performing scenes from
Macbeth. Student director Sarah Judd said the cast started rehearsals before lockdown and changed from in-person rehearsals to online.
The group used online video to stay in touch. When back together they all knew their lines so could focus on movement and interaction. Judd said if they hadn’t continued through lockdown, the performance wouldn’t have turned out as well as it did. Recordings had to be in one take with no editing.
The Manawatu¯-whanganui assessors this year are actor and comedian Alexander Sparrow and noted Shakespearean actor Katie Boyle. The national festival will be assessed in the same way, but groups can rerecord their entries based on feedback from the regional assessment.