Centred around the theme of ‘love’, ShakeSoc’s Esme Rose Mathialahan compiered as the character ‘Puck’ from A Midsummer Night’s Dream to guide the audience through a collection of performances from Shakespeare’s plays, ranging from comedies like Much Ado About Nothing to tragedies like Corialanus.
With a mixture of monologues, duologues, and small group performances, the cast, featuring faces old and new, demonstrated the appeal of such an event.
Showcases like the one on Sunday are a great way to make Shakespeare more accessible and get more people performing the Bard’s works! For example, the epic tragedies of Hamlet or King Lear are difficult to do justice by a university society because of their scale and cast list. Therefore, the short, sharp scenes, performed in the fantastic Micklegate Social ‘Den’ enabled the audience to get a taste of plays that are perhaps less familiar to the general viewing public, such as Corialanus.
Despite centering the performances on the theme of love, other themes shone through. Comedy was also prominent as the cast brought to life the humour integrated into these plays.
After the show, we spoke with ShakeSoc’s social secretary and the organiser of the event, Lily Bacon Darwin, about her design for the Showcase:
“I kind of put out an open application to anyone who wanted to apply,with scenes around love. And, I just kind of got what was given to me… it just turned out to be a nice mix of scenes that were like familial and more, like, angsty [but we also had scenes focused on] love… and romance.”
“I was just really lucky with the group of people that we got and I think it went really well. It’s one of those things where it’s hard to really know what it’s going to be like until you see it altogether… so I’m really happy with what went on and I’m really proud of everyone who was involved!”
To get involved with the Shakespeare Society, visit @uoyshakesoc on Instagram!