My First Theatre Experience Post UK Lockdown, Stratford-upon-Avon
News has been developing over the weeks about more theatre's having to begin redundancy consultations and now Christmas shows are being cancelled this festive season, including Qdos, the UK's biggest pantomime producer. It's a really uncertain time for theatre but there is some glimmer of hope as some outdoor performances begin to emerge up and down the UK in a bid to save the industry and people's jobs. One of those taking the plunge into outdoor performances in August is The RSC.
Situated in Shakespeare's home, Stratford-upon-Avon is the gorgeous Royal Shakespeare Company. They perform Shakespeare's plays, as well as works by Shakespeare's contemporaries and plays by the writers of today. I've seen quite a few shows here over the past few years, my favourite recently being The Boy in the Dress. The theatre does an exceptional job at reaching as many people as possible through their work within avenues like touring and residences, broadcasting to cinemas, online activity and their education work which reaches 530,000 children and young people, including free schools' broadcasts. They really are a remarkable part of the theatre industry for the region itself and they've put out all of the stops to present outdoor performances over the weekends in August for free.
The Shakespeare Snapshots will take place every Friday, Saturday and Sunday in August for 45 minutes at 1pm and 3pm everyday in the Dell Gardens. You can't miss the area marked off with 23 hearts and a stump which takes centre stage for the show. The shows are unticked but it does come on a first served basis. There are some standing spaces and the team advise that you don't arrive more than 30 minutes before your chosen performance of the day. The RSC team are on hand to direct you to a seating area and you need to stay within your allocated heart and not mix with other households. The team took our contact details for NHS Track and Trace which made me feel more comfortable about the whole experience.
The group of performers perform a different show each week, featuring speeches and sonnets from Shakespeare. The performers are actors from the postponed productions of The Winter's Tale and The Comedy of Errors. The setting for the show is really tranquil and calming, although it's the first performance some of us have experienced for 5 months it feels like the spark of normality we've all been after.
The performers perform socially distanced and it doesn't take away from following through the series of monologues, duologues , sonnets and speeches.
When the piece begins with the iconic 'All The World's A Stage' from Shakespeare's As You Like It you are taken on a journey through different characters. 45 minutes is a perfect length for a snapshot of some of these texts and finished with a jolly number which got the entire audience clapping and head bopping along. Some of the texts were more familiar than others for me, this would be a great taster for those audience members who haven't taken the dip into watching Shakespeare before. It offers good flavour for what the Royal Shakespeare Company perform in Shakespeare's hometown year in and year out.
There wasn't the traditional buzz a theatre does to you but this was a step towards a new era for theatre, one that can offer a new atmosphere entirely. The warmth and joy from live theatre is very much still alive. I would encourage you to support The RSC with these outdoor performances and donate some money afterwards in return for their gift of theatre in such uncertain times for their industry. The RSC will be back though, bigger and better in the future.
You can find out more about the live outdoor performances in the Dell Gardens here.