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Post by Pixie on Oct 12, 2004 8:01:43 GMT
Really can't remember that much about it, was so long ago. But it was Shakespeare we went to see, so maybe it wasn't.
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Post by PokerKitten on Oct 12, 2004 9:24:53 GMT
The main theatre is like a regular theatre (probably because it is, lol!), and The Swan is much smaller and, more in the round with tiers like at the Globe. ETA - never say that I never do anything for ya! (Never mind that it is more fun that work...) Click to see - The Swan; the main theatre; and The Other Place (which used to be bum-numbing but incredibly cheap so I was there a lot! Rebuilt now though, so may be more comfy!)
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Post by Pixie on Oct 12, 2004 11:19:39 GMT
Think it must have been main theatre, looks most familiar.
Must check out links properly...
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Post by PokerKitten on Jul 18, 2005 22:08:05 GMT
This is some ambitious season they have planned! RSCThe Royal Shakespeare Company is to stage the biggest festival in its history, inviting theatre companies from across the world and around the UK to join the Company in a unique celebration of Shakespeare’s complete works.
From April 2006 the RSC will host The Complete Works, a year-long Festival of the entire Shakespeare canon at its Stratford-upon-Avon home. The Festival embraces film, new writing, and contemporary music, as well as a comprehensive survey of theatre artists currently interpreting Shakespeare worldwide. The Complete Works will celebrate the truly global reach of the greatest writer in the English language, and will be the first time all 37 plays, the sonnets and the long poems have been presented at the same event.
Fifteen of the productions in The Complete Works will be staged by the RSC. They include: the start of a new cycle of Shakespeare’s history plays; the return of Patrick Stewart in The Tempest and Antony and Cleopatra (with Harriet Walter); Merry Wives, a new musical adaptation of The Merry Wives of Windsor starring Dame Judi Dench; and to close the Festival, the return of Sir Ian McKellen as King Lear, directed by Sir Trevor Nunn.
As well as celebrating RSC talent, the Festival will showcase international artists like Peter Stein and Yukio Ninagawa who have made a lasting impact on the performance of Shakespeare. Joining them will be some of the UK’s most exciting theatre artists and interpreters of Shakespeare, with companies like Propeller, Kneehigh, aandbc, and Forkbeard Fantasy all participating in The Complete Works.
Visiting companies from South and North America, Russia, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and across Europe will explore Shakespeare’s continuing influence on cultures around the world. The Festival will open up what the RSC intends will be a richer dialogue with international theatre companies, promoting future collaborations especially with other ensemble theatre makers.
Highlights among the visiting companies include:
- The Baxter Theatre Centre of South Africa presents Hamlet directed by Janet Suzman with Rajesh Gopie in the title role, John Kani as Claudius and Dorothy-Anne Gould as Gertrude, in its only UK performances.
- Peter Stein directs a British company of actors in a new production of Troilus and Cressida (in association with Edinburgh International Festival)
- Yukio Ninagawa brings his Japanese Titus Andronicus to the RST, in another UK premiere.
- Münchner Kammerspiele present the UK premiere of Othello, directed by the Belgian director, Luk Perceval, and starring Thomas Thieme.
- Anglo-Kuwaiti director Sulayman Al-Bassam directs a Pan-Arab version of Richard III focusing on Saddam Hussein’s early days as a secular Arab hero before he murdered his way through the Ba’ath party.
- Tim Supple directs A Midsummer Night’s Dream with a company of performers from across India and Sri Lanka. The production makes its UK premiere at the Festival after an extensive tour of the sub continent.
- Cheek by Jowl’s Russian Twelfth Night comes to Stratford.
- From the United States: Chicago Shakespeare Theater brings Barbara Gaines’ production of the Henry IV plays in their first visit to the UK; Michael Kahn’s Washington Shakespeare brings Love’s Labour’s Lost; and Theater for a New Audience from New York brings The Merchant of Venice with F Murray Abraham as Shylock.
RSC Artistic Director Michael Boyd said: “While there will be some who’ll relish the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see all the plays in one Festival, The Complete Works is not only for Shakespeare aficionados. The Festival looks set to be the most extensive celebration of Shakespeare’s genius – at once a national knees-up for the RSC’s house playwright and a survey of the different approaches to his work from around the world. Our ambition is to stage one of the most significant cultural festivals of the year in Stratford-upon-Avon.
“With the RSC’s finances in the black, a secure deal for performing in London and a great team working to transform our Stratford home, we can now stage a programme that meets our ambitions for an outward-looking RSC that’s truly engaged with the world. We want to do much more than pay lip service to Shakespeare’s internationalism as we prepare the ground for artistic collaborations that will continue beyond the life of the Festival.”
The Director of The Complete Works is Deborah Shaw who joined the RSC in 2004 from the Bath Shakespeare Festival. Deborah was previously Artistic Director of the Chester Gateway Theatre and Associate Director at Watford Palace Theatre.
New Festival venues throughout Stratford As well as performing in existing RSC theatres, The Complete Works will expand to cover venues throughout the town. A new outdoor theatre, The Dell, is planned for the RSC’s riverside theatre gardens, hosting a fringe festival of work by amateur, school and student groups.
Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare is buried, provides the setting for a production of Henry VIII (from aandbc, directed by Greg Thompson), while Shakespeare’s Birthplace hosts a series of Shakespearean debates. The homeless people’s theatre company Cardboard Citizens will stage Timon of Athens as a management-training course in a local hotel.
In October 2006 the Company will create a new temporary 100-seat studio theatre inside the Royal Shakespeare Theatre auditorium. This new venue, created especially for one month of the Festival, will host small-scale, multi-media and physical theatre companies. Visitors will include Filter, Forkbeard Fantasy and Yellow Earth in a co-production with Shanghai Arts.
The most significant new building to launch during the Festival will be the 1,000 seat Courtyard Theatre which opens in July 2006. The new, temporary theatre, built adjoining The Other Place, allows for increased audience capacity in Stratford during the Festival of up to 2,800 theatregoers a night. The Courtyard Theatre will continue as the Company’s main theatre when work starts in 2007 on the transformation of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.
The thrust-stage Courtyard Theatre, a prototype auditorium for the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre, opens with Artistic Director Michael Boyd re-visiting the Henry VI trilogy – plays which won him an Olivier award in 2001. The productions mark the start of a new history cycle encompassing Shakespeare’s entire chronicle of English history. Visiting companies in The Courtyard Theatre include Edward Hall’s Propeller all-male company with a residency which includes The Taming of the Shrew.
Following the success of its £5 young people’s tickets at the Albery theatre in the 2004/5 RSC London Season, the Company is extending the initiative to The Complete Works. Young people aged 16-25 will be able to buy £5 tickets, including some of the best seats available, either in advance or on the day.
New Work alongside the Shakespearean canon The Festival will highlight the vital and continuing connection between the contemporary imagination and the works of Shakespeare. Reaching across the centuries and picking up the playwriting baton are Roy Williams who has written a response to Much Ado About Nothing set against the backdrop of the Iraq War, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the starting point for a new play by Rona Munro, and Leo Butler who has taken free rein with The Tempest exploring the flickering moral compass of faith in a foreign land. All three writers were commissioned to create large scale plays with no restriction on cast size.
In addition, the RSC is continuing its collaboration with BBC Radio 3, presenting a fourth new play Regime Change by Peter Straughan. A re-working of Julius Caesar, the play will be produced on BBC Radio 3 during the Festival.
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Post by PokerKitten on Jul 18, 2005 22:12:02 GMT
I'd love to see Patrick Stewart on stage again (last time was a couple of years ago in The Master Builder, first time was... 27 years ago ) And my imagination is running wild at the thought of a Japanese production of TA ;D
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Post by nightnurse on Jul 18, 2005 22:46:57 GMT
I was reading a little bit about this the other day, and it sounds hugely ambitious Apart from seeing Derek Jacobis Hamlet twice...(ooer missus) the only other Shakespeare I saw was when we went to see The Merchant of Venice (or The Virgins of Menace lol) and Anthony & Cleopatra during A level Eng Lit...funnily enough it was Janet Suzman who played Cleo ;D
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Post by PokerKitten on Jul 18, 2005 22:56:44 GMT
I saw Glenda giving her Cleo. What a performance *is awed, even after all these years*
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Post by nightnurse on Jul 18, 2005 23:24:31 GMT
Lucky you PK....I would have liked to have seen 'the Scottish play' with Judi Dench and Ian McKellan....they showed a little bit when JD was voted Greatest British actress....and it was scandalous that Glenda didn't make the top ten
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Post by PokerKitten on Nov 23, 2005 23:49:07 GMT
With the Beeb being all Shakie Crazy at the moment, they have a little quiz HEREI got one wrong because I wibbled over Falstaff
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Post by Teebee on Nov 23, 2005 23:57:27 GMT
I got 3 wrong *hangs head in shame*..... Othello, the 'exit with bear' , and the Falstaff too .....
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Post by DeeDee on Nov 24, 2005 0:02:14 GMT
eeee I got 6/10 thats good for me cause I'm not a shakespeare person
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Post by PokerKitten on Nov 24, 2005 0:11:14 GMT
With Falstaff, I forgot he was only mentioned in the one particular play The Histories are not my thang, I'm afraid. I've never even studied any of 'em. Not quite sure how I got away with that ;D
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Post by Cyrus on Nov 24, 2005 3:59:38 GMT
I got 4 out of 10... yes I know I suck, but I guessed at all but the Macbeth one, so heh.
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Post by nightnurse on Nov 24, 2005 15:52:33 GMT
I was ridiculously pleased with 8/10 ;D
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Post by debw on Nov 24, 2005 16:38:23 GMT
With the Beeb being all Shakie Crazy at the moment, they have a little quiz HEREI got one wrong because I wibbled over Falstaff I got 8/10, Wrong Daughter for Lear and flubbed the opening line of Hamlet
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Post by nightnurse on Nov 25, 2005 19:31:50 GMT
Those were the same 2 I got wrong...and Hamlet is the only play I've actually seen more than a few times
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Post by PokerKitten on Nov 25, 2005 22:20:45 GMT
I've had a ponder, and I was supposed to study Henry V at degree level; but as I had seen it 3 times I never bothered reading it Probably why I got that wrong...
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Post by debw on Nov 25, 2005 22:43:52 GMT
Those were the same 2 I got wrong...and Hamlet is the only play I've actually seen more than a few times Me too * facepalm* but I've never seen or read Lear so I'll let myself off that one ;D
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Post by PokerKitten on Nov 25, 2005 23:45:45 GMT
I'm not too fond of Lear, it's kinda depressing But I did see a most excellent production a few years ago. Barrie Rutter's company.
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Post by PokerKitten on Nov 29, 2005 22:42:53 GMT
So now we've had our four Shakespeare Reworked plays from the Beeb, did they, um, work? I enjoyed them all, and was trying to rank them in order of pleasure, but can't really do it. Thought Much Ado was great; I laughed out loud many times. The regional news show setting was inspired, and the banter between our two leads was very much in the spirit of Shakie. The celeb chefs and kitchen environment of Macbeth was cool too, the Mystic Binmen a master stroke, Macbeth himself sexy as all hell... but I just wasn't convinced about the motivation for the first murder; and I was cringing when the pigs in the air anvil was dropped. Bad joke! But that shot of Macbeth slowly climbing the red-lined staircase, daggger held out at his side, is still with me. The Taming of the Shrewwas such fun, and it made me all misty eyed at the end Our roaring boy and girl both got what they wanted and needed by the end and that was cool. And a cross-dressing Petruchio was an unexpected delight ;D But the real surprise for me was how much I enjoyed A Midsummer Night's Dream, as I had read a half-hearted review beforehand. The holiday park setting worked for me, and the acting was convincing. Johnny Vegas' Bottom in particular ;D Loved Oberon and Titania, and Puck was cynical and a bit scary And damn it all, I was sniffling at the wedding party entertainments, with the fairies interfering to make it all go well
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