Our Playbox Theatre’s Consultant Director, and Artistic Director of Shakespeare Young Company tells us a little more about this exciting work in development:
It’s been a fascinating season for our Shakespeare Young Company, exploring the world of Shakespeare’s ‘Queens’. This is an installation performance, created for two showings in the crypt of St Mary’s Church, Warwick.
Former SYC member, Amelie Ashley-Timms, contacted us recently recalling this as “the most exciting space for Shakespeare to be performed”. It’s a setting that pre-dates the church of today and was built hundreds of years before Shakespeare was born. Vaulted roofing and surrounding tombs await these Queens from history who assemble to tell their stories.
The work is performed in a non-chronological ‘walk through’, for limited audience numbers to encounter Isabel, Katherine, Anne, Margaret, Elizabeth and their courts and characters, in a series of short living tableaux.
Why does Queen Isabel learn the fate of her husband through eavesdropping on the palace Gardeners? What turns Margaret into a ‘She-Wolf of France’, and we will be present as Katherine pleads her love and loyalty to Henry as he moves the world for Ann Boleyn.
It’s not a traditional ‘play’ and the experience should be approached as an encounter and an opportunity to be very close-up to the Queens, to hear them, and witness the moments in their lives that reveal inner thoughts, torment and resignation. Descending into the crypt is like stepping out of time, and being in a vault that houses so many memories over 900 years. We hope to welcome you to the experience soon.
To find out more about membership of Shakespeare Young Company, please head to Shakespeare Young Company | Playbox Theatre
