WILL ON CUE
Various Wellington outdoor locations, Wellington
11/02/2021 - 27/02/2021
Production Details
If “All the world’s a stage”, Wellington certainly is!
Celebrating its 30th Anniversary, SGCNZ is delighted to be presenting Alumni and groups who will introduce 10 edited plays and hand out cue-scripts to passers-by to brush up their Bardish skills!
Wed 10 Feb, Thu 11 Feb, Fri 12 Feb, Sat 13 Feb, Thu 18 Feb, Fri 19 Feb, Sat 20 Feb, Thu 25 Feb, Fri 26 Feb, Sat 27 Feb
Various locations and times, see below:
wheelchair accessible, join in, casual
11 Feb, 2:30pm, Merry Wives of Windsor, Outside Circa Theatre, 1 Taranaki St
12 Feb, 12:30pm, Julius Caesar, Civic Square
13 Feb, 2:30pm, Henry V, Top of Botanical Gardens
14 Feb, 2:30pm, King Lear, Outside Freyberg Pools
18 Feb, 12:30pm, Antony and Cleopatra, Outside St Andrew’s on the Terrace
19 Feb, 12:30pm, Hamlet, Bolton St Cemetery
20 Feb, 2:30pm, Cymbeline, Queen Victoria Statue between Kent Terrace and Cambridge Terrace
25 Feb, 12:30pm, Merchant of Venice, Midland Park
26 Feb, 12:30pm, The Tempest, Waitangi Park
27 Feb, 2:30pm, King John, Parliament grounds
Founded in 1991, SGCNZ is celebrating its 30th Anniversary throughout 2021! Since then over 122,000 students have been its annual SGCNZ University of Otago Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Festivals and another 5000 involved in our allied arts Competitions and programmes for primary school age students, teachers, mid-career actors, seminars, events and other activities for Shakespeare devotees.
SGCNZ’s principal objective is being a life skills enhancing organisation through Shakespeare.
The professional and personal skills gained are transferable into any workplace or field of endeavour. Collaboration, creativity, close reading and innovation are among these. Embracing of the polyglot of ethnicities and cultural diversity of which NZ’s population comprises, we provide many opportunities for inclusivity and integration socially. Developing self-confidence and pride in their own and each other’s achievements, helps the young people address over-present health, anxiety and emotional issues.
Developing new ‘whanau’ with similar interests, results in many pan-year collaborations of our Alumni.
SGCNZ’s participation in The Performance Arcade’s What if the City was a Theatre, with its series of ten pop-up Shakespeare performances entitled Will on Cue throughout February, is the first its year of 30th Anniversary celebrations.
Theatre , Outdoor ,
Relishing resonant classics
Review by John Smythe 12th Feb 2021
What if a theatre troupe with too few cast
Asked audience members to play some parts?
‘Tis thus plots play out in each Will On Cue show
Where those given roles just go with the flow.
The first of ten is The Merry Wives of Windsor,
Slashed to 45 minutes – and since Will wrote
most of it in prose, apart from Mistress Quickly’s final homilies, I’ll spare you further attempts at iambic pentameters, let alone rhyming couplets.
This time the group stepping up to most of the roles, co-ordinated by Wellington Shakespeare Society’s Brian Pearl, is from the Malvina Major Retirement Village (recalling Butterfly Creek Theatre Troupe’s memorable A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the 2007 Fringe). The setting outside Circa Theatre is ideal on this sunny day, although the wind tends to carry soft voices away (oops – was that another couplet?).
Legend has it Queen Elizabeth I so loved Sir John Falstaff in Henry IV Part 1 (1596) that she commissioned a play about Falstaff in love to be played before her at the Garter Feast in April 1597 (before the errant knight returned to be rejected by Prince Hal in Henry IV Part 2 (1598) and was then killed off in absentia in Henry V (1598).
What she got was Falstaff in lust and getting his come-uppance for his appalling predatory attitude to, and would-be treatment of, women. Airing this play again offers a perfect example of how classics find new relevance when seen in the context of their time of production as well as at the time of writing. That’s what makes them classics.
Doubtless today’s offering – Julius Caesar, Civic Square, 12:30pm – will also resonate in terms of contemporary politics on the global stage.
Avail yourselves for fiscal costs of nil
Of these delights from William Shakespeare’s quill.
12 Feb, 12:30pm, Julius Caesar, Civic Square
13 Feb, 2:30pm, Henry V, Top of Botanical Gardens
14 Feb, 2:30pm, King Lear, Outside Freyberg Pools
18 Feb, 12:30pm, Antony and Cleopatra, Outside St Andrew’s on the Terrace
19 Feb, 12:30pm, Hamlet, Bolton St Cemetery
20 Feb, 2:30pm, Cymbeline, Queen Victoria Statue between Kent Terrace and Cambridge Terrace
25 Feb, 12:30pm, Merchant of Venice, Midland Park
26 Feb, 12:30pm, The Tempest, Waitangi Park
27 Feb, 2:30pm, King John, Parliament grounds.
Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer
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