The RSC’s Nationwide OPEN STAGES project gears up for Shakespeare’s birthday, with its first productions opening around the UK from this month, until 2015
As celebrations kick off for Shakespeare’s 450
th birthday on 23 April this year, his position as the people’s playwright is stronger than ever – as proof of this, his plays are being performed around the country in village halls, community centres, pubs, castles, churches, and even in a quarry by an army of amateur theatre makers.
The Open Stages amateur companies have been busy building sets, sewing costumes and rehearsing scenes as they prepare for a frenetic year of performances beginning in the month of Shakespeare’s birth, April 2014 and playing through until April 2015.
In the past, as part of the RAF Theatrical Association (RAFTA) we have ourselves been involved in the RSC Open Stages projects ... indeed, one of our Directors is still benefitting from regular RSC contact and training days - this is an excellent programme.
RSC Open Stages involves over 2500 participants including teachers, police officers, car salesmen, former soldiers, serving sailors, IT workers, nurses, students and pensioners – all are members of the 100 amateur theatre companies taking part in the this project which stretches across the UK. Each of these companies have been working with RSC professionals and its seven partner regional theatres, learning skills such as stage combat, stage management, acting and of course how to bring the words of the world’s most performed playwright to life. And each of these companies will be performing their own Shakespeare or Shakespeare inspired production in a vast array of venues across the country.
Amongst the first to reach the stage were The Pirton Players, whose Orwellian take on Julius Caesar was staged in their local village hall in Hitchin. They were followed by the students of Leicester University, who inspired by the ongoing controversy over the fate of Richard III’s recently discovered corpse in the local car park, staged a production of Shakespeare’s play in the very Cathedral where he is proposed to be buried. While in Stockport the Garrick Theatre, an amateur company more than twice the age of the RSC, performed The Winter’s Tale, a play last performed by them in 1906.
Coming up in April and May are two Hamlets one performed in a disused Victorian swimming pool in Glasgow (Strathclyde Theatre), the other performed by students from St Andrew’s University in the style of a Danish crime drama. While the little performed Cymbeline is presented by Artisans Drama Society as a fairy tale and Bolton Little Theatre present have written a new play exploring the early lives of ‘Lear’s Daughters’.
The 100 amateur companies comprise of approximately 2,500 participants (the oldest being 80 and the youngest 8 years old), later performances include Macbeth in a Cardiff shopping centre, The Tempest in a quarry in Durham, the Royal Navy performing A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the Second Sea Lords garden, Titus Andronicus in a Gulf War setting in Edinburgh, a female King Lear in London and a company of disabled actors staging Ilyria on Sea – based on Twelfth Night.
