Here's To The Shrew...

Here we are, just finishing our run with The Dream and already we're rehearsing this year's Dartmouth Shakespeare Week production of 'The Taming of the Shrew'.

Another of Will's romps that involve people dressing up as someone else, deception, love, lust and general tomfoolery...it's almost as if, after writing something as dark and deadly as 'Titus Andronicus' (written in the same year), he needed to amuse himself and his audiences, with something a great deal lighter. And, as ever, he succeeded.

This year's director, also Artistic Director of the company, is Jane Windsor-Smith. She's the one who had the original idea of Dartmouth Shakespeare Week, and the Inn Theatre Company, and been involved in theatre since she was knee-high to Margaret Rutherford!
Jane directed 'The Tempest' and 'Macbeth' (with Gil Garland) and has appeared in 'Romeo and Juliet' as Angelica, the Nurse, in Twelfth Night as Maria and very few people who saw her as Snug in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' (both productions) will ever forget that comedic tour-de-force (rooooooaar!)

Jane has elected to do things a bit differently this year. Not only in respect of the way we rehearse the show, but also in the presentation. This year's production is very heavily influenced by the Commedia Dell'arte form. There have already been workshops to this end and it was this notion of Commedia that bagged the company another three years of affiliation to the Royal Shakespeare Company.

We are also holding three specific workshops with a voice and text coach from the RSC, to help the cast pull as much as they can from the text. There will be another movement workshop in the not too distant future, with a local practitioner, who has been trained in the ways of Commedia Dell'arte.

It is a very physical from of theatre and forms the basis of so much of what we use in entertainment today - from Shakespeare to The Young Ones and beyond.

'The Taming of the Shrew' is almost tailor-made for Dell'arte interpretation, with so many of the characters fitting so perfectly into those of the Commedia stock-character canon. It's going to be a riot of colour, action  and comedy.

 And we've already been practicing with the masks, although the intention is not to use them in the main production...but the real commedia dell'arte masks will be utilised at some - or several - points in the production. The characters of Commedia are not nearly so well-known to modern theatre goers as they were in 16th and 17th centuries; although there's no doubt that you would probably recognise some of the: Scaramouche, Arelquino (Harelquin), Pantalone and, of course, the Lovers. 

And if you've ever seen a Punch and Judy show, then you've already met many of the stock-characters from Commedia Dell'arte. It's part of our oldest theatrical traditions.

 And as we did last year with 'King Lear', we shall try and keep you up to date with everything that's going on in the rehearsal room, the workshops and up at the castle as we start to bring this year's magnificent show to the stage.

We'll place the final cast list here, with some photos, and we'll try and persuade that doyen of the lens, Keith, to take some more fabulous shots of what goes on, so you can see those too.
The web-site will be constantly (well, when I've got the time between learning my lines) updated and I'll see if I can persuade Jane to write a few bits and pieces for the blog too.
It promises to be another terrific year.
Come and join us!