Everyone has some form of relationship with Shakespeare. But those good and bad experiences from school or live performances can become burdens when faced with dense blank verse and light stage directions. The Scaffold Shakespeare Company is built upon acknowledging these burdens and putting them aside to explore the work as though for the first time. In this exciting series of workshops, they have created an open and inclusive space for professional theatremakers to explore Shakespeare’s plays.
This spring’s season Warring Love will have play-specific workshops for Shakespearean novices and experts focussing on The Comedy of Errors, Henry IV Part II, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Henry V and Romeo and Juliet. These workshops were first begun by Scaffold Shakespeare to allow professional theatre-makers – whether actors, directors, designers or dramaturgs – to ask the basic questions or obsess over the tiniest details of Shakespeare plays, making them accessible to everyone who wants to understand them.
Begun more than seven years ago, the Scaffold Shakespeare Company workshops are led by the Artistic Directors Annabelle Brown, Tobias Deacon, Bryn Holding and Tom Latter. With experience across acting, directing and composing, all four have worked in new and classical theatre for West-End, fringe, universities, drama schools and schools.
The workshops are run to allow participants to manage their day according to their interests and to manage their own involvement. In this way, the day begins with a group-reading but the parts are cast by volunteering and are open to all regardless of age, gender or ethnicity. The deeper analysis of the text begins after lunch and pursues the aspects of the text which excite curiosity or invites further interrogation. The workshops are built around the people who take part in them; they are a unique and unrepeatable experience every time.
Artistic Director and workshop leader, Tom Latter comments, “These workshops celebrate the fact that Shakespeare’s plays are full of variety and open to interpretation. They are open and accessible to theatre-makers of any experience level, because the multiple perspectives this gives to his plays really helps us question what they can mean for us now. It is an inclusive, supportive space where theatre-makers can be bold and unburdened by the weight of Shakespearean History.”
Workshops will take place at Jerwood Space and tickets available here.
The Comedy of Errors, Sunday 22 April, 10.30am – 6pm
Henry IV Part II, Sunday 13 May, 10.30am – 6pm
Love’s Labour’s Lost, Sunday 27 May, 10.30am – 6pm
Henry V, Sunday 10 June, 10.30am – 6pm
Romeo and Juliet, Sunday 24 June, 10.30am – 6pm
