Pop-up Globe back for a second season
The first time Jacque Drew played Beatrice in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing was in an intimate theatre space as part of a US Shakespeare company in front of 300 people.
In just over a week’s time, she’ll be playing the character again - almost two decades later at the second season of Auckland’s popular Globe theatre with crowds of up to a possible 900.
The American-born, Aucklandbased actor also plays the role of the Duke in Othello.
She says having a different director for each of the plays, and contrasting themes and approaches, has led to lot of ‘‘cross-pollination’’ between the two rehearsal processes.
‘‘We are dancing, we are singing, we are firing on all cylinders.
‘‘Our minds are trying to get the lines and the text down, our bodies are trying to do what we’re being asked to do in terms of fighting or dancing or whatever.’’
The three-storeyed pop-up Globe is the world’s first working replica of Shakepeare’s theatre.
It started in 2016 in Auckland’s central city.
This year the theatre has been relocated to Ellerslie Racecourse gardens and will be running four plays - comedies Much Ado About Nothing and As You Like It, and dramas Henry V and Othello.
The actor, teacher and director of the Aspiring Young Actors (AYA) drama school says getting a place in the Globe acting company felt like ‘‘winning the lottery’’.
This year there are two full companies of actors, with more than 1200 applications received from actors around the world to be part of them.
With opening night just around the corner, Drew says she’s ‘‘really excited’’ to be able to share the Globe with the audience themselves.
‘‘They are another character in the play,’’ the Herald Island resident says.
‘‘I don’t know any other form of theatre that I’ve been involved in that has asked us - and this was what the Globe was designed for to talk to the audience directly, to bring them in all the time.’’
And what of her own character Beatrice?
‘‘I’m at the point now where so much more of this part resonates to me as a human.
‘‘There’s a lot of times on stage where I just go, ‘Oh this is me.’’’
The 2017 season of the Pop-up Globe runs from February 23 to May 14.