EDUCATION: WESTLAKE BOYS
Loves Labours Lost.
The Winter's Tale.
Much Ado about Nothing.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Socially distanced Shakespeare ‘global’ hit with audiences In 2021, and after the hiatus for the drama production in 2020, a new idea was executed to allow for the 'show to go on' during these Covid-19 times. In essence, the production allowed for six separate scenes in six different performance venues, with socially distanced audiences of no more than 30 people at each. Six plays were chosen, all by Shakespeare: these were The Winter's Tale, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, Romeo and The Tempest. Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing and Love’s Labour’s Lost. The audiences were not only entertained by the cast of 65 but also by the Year 5 and 6 students from Sunnybrae Normal School, who guided the audiences from one venue to the next with help from Year 13 students from Westlake Girls. Audiences thoroughly enjoyed themselves, with numerous emails of congratulations. "All the kids were amazing and so enthusiastic – they were so funny! And talented. Brilliant takes on Shakespeare
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that were so entertaining." As well as: "What a great concept. I loved how different each of the performance spaces was." The experience of Covid is not hugely dissimilar to that of Shakespeare, who spent 78 months of his working life in various lockdowns due to the bubonic plague. In fact, in 1606, Shakespeare spent 10 months in lockdown, during which he wrote three of his greatest plays: King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra. The great benefit of this way of Romeo and Juliet. producing the school show was that if Covid-19 alert levels had changed (to a 2 or 3) then the production could still have gone ahead. Furthermore, audiences got to see parts of the school that they might not ordinarily see and enjoy six radically different spaces in both design and in the way that the audience seating was configured. The school production does not happen without an army of student technicians and staff in numerous capacities, to whom we give enormous thanks for all their hard work and creativity.
Issue 123 - September 2021 www.channelmag.co.nz
