Thank you for visiting our archive. Each performance submitted to our website will be explained in detail in its own blog post. You can choose to look through these posts in a variety of ways.
Cole Porter's popular Kiss Me Kate, a musical based on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew was part of the Welsh National Opera's autumn Shakespeare400 Season. WNO Artistic Director David Pountney said ‘It's a marvellous opportunity for us to bring together enormously varied works which Shakespeare’s works have inspired.’
Read MoreThe UK Premiere of pianist and composer André Tchaikowsky's opera based on Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. The opera is a potent attack on prejudice, a deeply personal response to Tchaikowsky's experiences as a child in the Warsaw Ghetto, that was unperformed for three decades before David Pountney commissioned performances at the Bregenz Festival in Austria. The Welsh National Opera production was part of the Welsh National Opera's autumn Shakespeare400 Season. WNO Artistic Director Pountney said “It's a marvellous opportunity for us to bring together enormously varied works which Shakespeare’s works have inspired.”
Read MoreVerdi described Macbeth as 'one of mankind's greatest creations'. His opera based on the play was part of the Welsh National Opera's autumn Shakespeare400 Season. WNO Artistic Director David Pountney said ‘It's a marvellous opportunity for us to bring together enormously varied works which Shakespeare’s works have inspired.’
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Shakespeare's romantic comedy was brought to life at the Bristol Shakespeare Festival by Folksy Theatre, a company who tour the UK with open-air and indoor theatre productions using music, interactive performance and puppetry to make their productions fun and accessible for audiences of all ages and backgrounds.
Read MoreTaking Flight Theatre's take on Romeo and Juliet set the tragic love story in 1963 with the Montagues and Capulets fighting it out on the river for the annual college boat race. The promenade performance featured many of the company's trademarks including lots of audience interaction, BSL by Sami Thorpe and live audio description. Taking Flight Theatre is a professional inclusive theatre company based in Cardiff, Wales who work to challenge perceptions of disability through accessible theatre performances.
Read MoreTheatr Clwyd's Much Ado About Nothing featured a Portmeirion village inspired set with a chess board lawn, upon which Beatrice and Benedick waged their battle of wits. The design echoed that of the RSC's Love's Labour's Lost/Love's Labour's Won (2014). Theatr Clwyd transformed their Anthony Hopkins Theatre "to make the production more intimate, exciting and absorbing". The audience sat on banks of seating on either side of the stage, with additional seating available at tables on-stage. In addition to celebrating the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, the production marked Theatr Clwyd’s 40th birthday and its 400th show.
Read MoreShakespeare's late romance, The Winter's Tale (a tale of jealous furies, an abandoned baby, a sheep shearing feast and a bear) was performed in The Willow Globe (Y Glôb Byw), a scaled down, living version of the Globe in London (a third of its size in diameter) in Llandrindod Wells, Powys, Wales. Its Artistic Directors Phil Bowen and Sue Best believe it is one of the largest willow constructions in the country and probably the only one in use as a theatre in the world.
Read MoreFollowing her work with director Carrie Cracknell on the Young Vic production of Macbeth (November 2015 - January 2016), Australian choreographer Lucy Guerin returned to the play in her dance piece Tomorrow. The performance featured an original score by composer, sound and multimedia artist Scanner (Robin Rimbaud) and aimed to "[give] physical life to the psychological conflict that led Macbeth to murder." Tomorrow "[re-imagined] Shakespeare's Macbeth - mapping out the actions of the characters alongside the illusory, supernatural and psychological disturbances of the play embodied by the cast of 'witches'."
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A promenade performance of Henry VI performed by an all-female ensemble in the roof void of the Wales Millennium Centre, including impressive aerial circus skills. The production highlighted issues of power, trust, conflict and inequality in society and our responsibilities to future generations. It followed the success of Omizade Productions' 2015 all-female Richard III.
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This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
