SGCNZ National Shakespeare Schools Production 2023
Wild Theatre, Wellington Zoo, Wellington
01/10/2023 - 01/10/2023
Production Details
Directors: Craig Geenty, Kerryn Palmer, Holly Shanahan
Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand
Uniting Forbidden Relationships
Never straightforward in their themes, Shakespeare’s exploration and outcomes of forbidden relationships have very different outcomes. Enjoying the challenges of their currency, young people relish in playing with the interpretation of them.
The walls of Wellington’s Scots College will resound with the mellifluous tones of Shakespearean drama and music from 48 secondary age students from around New Zealand, selected from Shakespeare Globe Centre NZ’s 24 Regional and National Festivals to attend SGCNZ National Shakespeare Schools Production (NSSP)2023.
For a week of the school holidays from 24 September to 2 October, adrenaline will surge as rangatahi begin each day with waiata and haka practice before joining together to do workshops on singing Shakespearean songs, dancing, comedy and combat – to mention just a few.
For the other half of each day, they will toil away in rehearsals, preparing for the culminating productions of 40-minute excerpts of scenes from Romeo & Juliet, Richard III and Cymbeline to be directed by actor/director/agent/SGCNZ Alumna Holly Shanahan, drama lecturer/director Kerryn Palmer and actor Craig Geenty, (respectively), who will also take a workshop each. They will be accompanied by winners of SGCNZ’s Music Composition and Costume Design Competitions, Student Composer, Karim Efremov and Student Costumier, Libby Nicholls.
The line up of illustrious tutors includes Dame Miranda Harcourt speaking on screen skills for Shakespeare and SGCNZ Chief Executive Dawn Sanders sharing her deep knowledge of the Globe and NZ’s gift of Hangings, as well as Shakespeare’s world.
Performances comprising 40 minutes from each of the plays plus some additional items will take place at the Alan Gibbs Centre, Wellington College at 7.30pm on Saturday 30 September and 4pm on Sunday 1 October at the Wild Theatre, Wellington Zoo.
“This hotly sought after opportunity is full of enriching learning experiences, creating a like-minded new whanau and all-important support network, and the chance of being selected to go to the Globe as a member of SGCNZ Young Shakespeare Company 2024,” commented CEO/Organiser Dawn Sanders.
Performance Information:
Bookings: Eventfinda.co.nz
Alan Gibbs Centre, Wellington College, Dufferin Street, Mt Victoria, Wellington
Saturday 30 September 2023, 7.30pm
Adults $25
SGCNZ adult friends & concessions $20
Students $12, student friends $20, children under 12 $12
Programmes $5
Wild Theatre Wellington Zoo
Sunday 1 October 2023, 4.00pm
(Ticket price incudes full day access to the Zoo)
Adults $40
SGCNZ adult friends and concessions students $25,
student friends $20 children under 12 $12
Programmes $5
The performances should be considered works-in-progress, with the process being more important than attempting to unrealistically achieve a perfect finished product in this short time.
Huge appreciation to the intensive work of our Directors: Craig Geenty, Kerryn Palmer, Holly Shanahan
Richard III
Director: Kerryn Palmer
Student Costumier: Libby Nicholls
Student Composer: Keey Fremm
SYNOPSIS:
RICHARD III depicts the rise to power and the short but brutal reign of King Richard III of England. This retelling portrays a man desperate for control and power, the people he destroys along the way and the worm of conscience that gnaws at his soul.
Kerryn would like to thank her amazing group of rangatahi who have wholeheartedly embraced this dark tale.
CAST:
Queen Margaret - Erika Siversen
Queen Elizabeth - Karissa Wan
Duchess of York - Jess Tweddle
Richard Duke of Gloucester - Billy McCarthy
King Richard III - Gray Dawson
Lady Anne - Bella Goomes
Clarence - Te Mihi Potae
Buckingham - Kaitara Coker
Richmond - Cody Laing-Bayley
First Murderer - Jesse Franks
2nd Murderer - Rowan Metreyeon
Prince Edward - Ashleen Sopher
The Young Duke of York - Devon Te Au
Hastings - Joshua Murray
Brackenbury /Tyrell - Claire Best
Original Music - Keely Fremm
Cymbeline
Director: Craig Geenty
Student Costumier: Libby Nicholls
Student Composer: Keey Fremm
SYNOPSIS:
King Cymbeline has banished his poor but worthy surrogate son Posthumus for secretly marrying his daughter Innogen. She should have been married to her evil stepmother’s entitled son Cloten! What follows is an exciting challenge for these talented young actors, containing many of Shakespeare’s familiar plot devices rolled into one play. There’s comedy, absurdity, love, betrayal, disguises, death and (spoiler) a happy ending!
CAST:
Cymbeline - Gabriel Gerente
Innogen 1 - Sophie Atienza
Innogen 2 - Georgia Dann
Innogen 3 - Elly Mae Lawson
Posthumus 1 - Manahi Taoho
Posthumus 2 - Jackson Terry
Pisanio 1 - Taya Flame-Sparrow
Pisanio 2 - Maria Walker-Kinnell
Iachimo 1 - William Haywood
Iachimo 2 - Bruno McMillan
Queen - Paige Sweetman
Cloten 1 - Baxter Ferguson
Cloten 2 - Jimmy Muir
Belarius - Molly Powell
Guiderius - Natalie Lamb
Arviragus - Maria Walker-Kinnell
Caius Lucius - Paige Sweetman
Cornelius - Jimmy Muir
Jupiter - Taya Flame-Sparrow
Ghost of Father - William Haywood
Ghost of Mother - Elly Mae Lawson
Ghost of Brother - Bruno McMillan
Ghost of Brother - Molly Powell
INTERVAL
Romeo & Juliet
Director: Holly Shanahan
Student Costumier: Libby Nicholls
Student Composer: Keey Fremm
SYNOPSIS:
Verona. An encampment. Sometime in an ever-nearing future. Our world is one that seethes with the desperate and dispossessed; the marginalised; survivors, rebels, rejects, one-pay-check-away refugees; discarded to die on the harsh streets in the shadow of some distant megacity.
Placing us in the world makes our Capulets and Montagues urgent ‘families’ of circumstance. Humans will seek tribe and belonging ever more in the most desperate of times.
And yet, where humans are there will always exist laughter, moments of joy, play, and the yearning for real love and connection.
CAST in order of speaking:
Sampson - River Park
Gregory - Blud /Kahu o Te Wesling
Abraham - Oisín Casey-Galloway
Balthazar - Martha McAuley
Benvolio - Hamilton Kay
Tybalt - Lavenitani Mischah Taufa
Capulet - Tomás/Tanya Green-Camargo
Lady Capulet - Lucy Murray
Montague/Masker - Alexander Semmens
Prince/Friar/Second Capulet - Ngahere Helund
Romeo 1 - Lillyana Steffert -Ferrarini
Peter - Ben Evans
Nurse - Jay Gao
Juliet - Eve Galbraith
Mercutio - M’Lago Morris
Romeo 2 - Sarah Smith
Song
Music & Lyrics: Ain’t no Sunshine
Taught by: Adriana Calabrese
Rehearsed by: Te Mihi Potae & Keey Fremm
Performed by: Full Cast
Waiata ~ Pokarekare Ana
Taught & rehearsed by: Te Mihi Potae
Performed by: Full Company
Haka ~ Tika Tonu
by Waimarama Pūhara
Taught & rehearsed by: Billy McCarthy & Bella Goomes
Performed by: Full Company
Theatre , Youth ,
3 hrs
A passionate, committed and finally joyful outcome of an intensive creative process
Review by John Smythe 03rd Oct 2023
It is astonishing what 48 secondary school students – selected from the 4000-odd who participated in this year’s Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand Regional and National University of Otago Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Festivals – have achieved in just over a week of workshops and rehearsals.
Until the week began they had no idea which three plays they’d be working on, let alone what the casting would be. Amid the workshops and rehearsals for songs, waiata and haka, they only had five half days to rehearse the 40-minute version of their play yet – in the second of their two presentations, which I witness at in Wellington Zoo’s Wildlife Theatre – all involved are fully invested in the agreed interpretations, and perform with extraordinary skill, intelligence and clarity of purpose.
The purpose of this review, then, is to honour the kaupapa of SGCNZ and write this event into the Theatreview archive, not least because it is inevitable that some of the names listed in the Production Details will be searched-for online in years to come. Some will become notable performing arts practitioners while others will excel in a range of other vocations because the transferable life skills they are embracing have immeasurable value in a productive, supportive and healthily functioning society.
A media release suggests ‘Uniting Forbidden Relationships’ is the common theme in their approaches to Richard III, Cymbeline and Romeo & Juliet. Highly relatable, then, to creatively questing adolescents out to make sense of this world and find their places in it. Every role they get to ‘inhabit’ gives the actors salutary access to the good and bad of human existence.
As most of us know, the woe-wrought tragedy of Romeo & Juliet exemplifies the adage that “the course of true love never did run smooth” (as Lysander’s observes in the less disastrous A Midsummer Night’s Dream). It only reunites the star-crossed lovers in needless death.
In Cymbeline, the forbidden relationship is between King Cymbeline’s daughter Innogen (Imogen in some texts) and the low-born Posthumus, whom she has secretly married. The convoluted multi-genre plot (it’s one of Shakespeare’s ‘problem plays’) not only reunites the couple but also the King with his long-lost sons.
The title character of Richard III claims his rudely stamped deformity forbids him the pleasures of love and power so he determines “to prove a villain” to unite himself with his desires – and inevitably brings about his own demise.
Pulsating rhythms permeate and book-end the distillation of Richard III, directed by Kerryn Palmer. The driving passions are clearly present, comedy is well-judged to counterpoint and amplify the tragic elements. Richard exemplifies the self-loathing/love dichotomy within us all and the casualties of his malevolence command our compassion.
Director Craig Geenty and his team wisely opt for absurdist comedy in their romp through Cymbeline. They embrace every trope with alacrity as they navigate each increasingly deceptive warp and weft of the tangled plot. The fact that everyone involved clearly knows what’s going on engenders our trust as we recognise countless flaws of human behaviour. The simultaneously shocking yet hilarious beheading of Cloten sums up the clever ‘orchestration’.
Holly Shanahan’s cast ingeniously revitalise the well-known tale of Romeo & Juliet by making Verona an encampment “in an ever-nearing future … that seethes with the desperate and dispossessed; the marginalised; survivors, rebels, rejects, one-pay-check-away refugees; discarded to die on the harsh streets in the shadow of some distant megacity.” Shanahan’s powerful provocation causes the timeless tribal dynamics to play out in a rivetingly rendered range of emotional states that blend comedy and tragedy in a potent elixir.
Anyone who feels negative about ‘the youth of today’ need only witness such events as this passionate, committed and finally joyful outcome of an intensive creative process. The future is in good hands.
Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer
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