Black Swan State Theatre Company

Australian theatre companies are shunning Shakespeare. A much-needed break, or a mistake?

Retrieved on: 
Mittwoch, Oktober 18, 2023
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In 2024 not one mainstage theatre company in Australia will perform Shakespeare.

Key Points: 
  • In 2024 not one mainstage theatre company in Australia will perform Shakespeare.
  • The only exception will be Bell Shakespeare.
  • Theatre makers such as Lachlan Philpott, Nakkiah Lui and Andrew Bovell have been calling for less Shakespeare and more new work since the mid-2010s.

A forum for conversations

    • He is important because we have, for 400 years, made him important, using his work to have rich conversations about identity, truth, meaning and morality.
    • These conversations are worth participating in.
    • The fact that none of these companies will perform Shakespeare next year suggests a decline in engagement with the canon outside of adaptations.
    • We risk understanding ourselves merely through the lens of now, rather than enriching our present through discussion with our history.

Critical engagement

    • We are not restricted to either using Shakespeare as a sock puppet to voice our own ideas, or ignoring him altogether.
    • Like any fruitful conversation, it means listening, sitting with discomfort, learning, recognising what still speaks to us, and responding to what doesn’t.
    • Conversing with Shakespeare does not mean smoothing over problems or forcing him to agree with us.
    • The scenes in which Shylock is forced to surrender both his property and his faith were jarringly and uncomfortably melancholy.

Talking back to history

    • What are we doing differently today, and what should we be doing differently?
    • Nuanced, two-way conversations with our cultural history are vital to progress.
    • It means learning from, questioning, and talking back to our history.

A journey of discovery and identity formation: The Dictionary of Lost Words makes its wonderful stage debut

Retrieved on: 
Donnerstag, September 28, 2023
Male, World war, Dictionary, Speech, Sydney, Lost Words: Beyond the Page, Kaurna, Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Book review, Writing, World War I, The Dictionary of Lost Words, Woman, Pamphlet, Auld Lang Syne, State Theatre Company of South Australia, Oxford, Grief, Roslyn Packer Theatre, Oxford English Dictionary, Rupture, Time, Child, Pip, Black Swan State Theatre Company, System, Book, Mouth, Airline, Tourism, Entertainment, Esmé

The Dictionary of Lost Words follows Esme as she navigates the patriarchal world of Victorian England.

Key Points: 
  • The Dictionary of Lost Words follows Esme as she navigates the patriarchal world of Victorian England.
  • While her father and colleagues construct the Oxford English Dictionary, Esme begins to form her own dictionary – particularly the words spoken by women and the working class who have been excluded.

A brilliant innovation

    • We first see her as an ingénue child hiding under the large desk of the eminent lexicologists.
    • Her direct address to the audience draws us into her perspective of what is occurring around her.
    • In a brilliant innovation from designer Jonathon Oxlade we see words handwritten and projected from a camera hidden within a lamp above the central desk.

A beautiful realisation

    • An inspired touch is having the ensemble move slowly behind key monologues and duologues, adding intricate detail.
    • When Esme gives birth we see her mouth magnified by the live camera, in a close-up that amplifies the intensity of the birth.
    • Cobham-Hervey is supported by a fine ensemble who succinctly double up as required in Laughton’s economy of writing.
    • This is a very clever realisation of Williams’ novel for the stage and gives great power to key moments of this epic story.