O for a Muse of fire

FOREST MAGIC: Former Girls’ High student Laurel Mitchell (right) acts in a scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the 2016 East Coast Shakespeare festival for secondary school students. Picture supplied

Cross-dressing, magic and the carnivalesque feature in excerpts from Shakespeare’s plays Gisborne school students bring to life next week.

Tragedy, comedy, romance, manipulation and murder — it’s all in there too — in the poetically titled East Coast University of Otago Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Festival (ECUoOSWSF).

This region’s Shakespeare festival for secondary school students includes five, and 15 minute selections from Hamlet, Cymbeline, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, Othello, Macbeth and Taming of the Shrew. Students from Lytton, Campion, Girls High and Boys High are involved in this year’s competition.

The 15 minute scenes can be directed by students, teachers or other adults but that challenge has not been taken up in these parts by a student for some time. And now Lytton student Caleb Collier has, with a scene from Macbeth.

In another rare move Girls High student Tyler Krutz will direct a five minute scene from the infrequently performed tragedy-romance, Cymbeline.

Winners from the East Coast UoOSWSF have the opportunity to attend a national festival. Winners from that event will workshop material, and perform in a final festival from which a handful of young Shakespeareans will be selected to go to Shakespeare’s Globe theatre in London. At the circular theatre by the Thames river they will workshop material, attend professional production and even perform on the Globe’s stage.

The East Coast Shakespeare festival will be held in the Girls High School hall on Wednesday next week at 7pm. Door sales only: $10 adults $5 students.