Young Shakespearean actors from Hamilton take the international stage at The Globe

Matthew (centre, holding the red hankerchief) as Desdemona in Shakespeare's Othello. Photo / Jamieson Hudson

Three Hamilton high school students have been selected as the only ones from Waikato to be part of a cast of 24 young Kiwis forming the Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand Young Shakespeare Company (SGCNZ YSC) 2022.

Eden Peters, 17, from Hamilton Girls High School, and Matthew Lee, 17 and Harry White, 18, both from Hamilton Boys High School have been passionate about theatre and performing for a long time and recently fell in love with Shakespeare.

The three young actors will travel with the SGCNZ YSC 2022 to London in July next year for three intense weeks of theatre representing New Zealand at an international level.

The company cast will work with world-renowned Globe Theatre directors and actors and perform on the Globe stage at the end of the trip.

Matthew says: "We are all really excited about this amazing opportunity. Our current cast was selected from the SGCNZ National Shakespeare Schools Production 2021, which took place at the start of October in Wellington and featured 48 of the top student actors in the country.

"We made incredibly close friendships there, we became a family. Getting inspired by those and performing together with them - on the Globe stage - is so cool."

Matthew and Harry both started seriously getting into theatre at school.

Harry says: "The first opportunity to be cast in a play was in Year 9. I was the only Year 9 student in the cast with the rest being seniors. This experience taught me about commitment and focus."

Eden says she has been dancing and performing as long as she can remember. The plays that got her into Shakespeare were Romeo and Juliet and MacBeth. At the latter she was playing the main role.

"It was very different. I was MacBeth and got to stand on stage for 15 minutes yelling at my friends."

Matthew says his experience was a bit different and he had to be convinced to join a Shakespeare play.

"I didn't get into it early, I was comfortable on stage, but I didn't really like Shakespeare at first, because I thought he was old and boring. My drama teacher Mr [Dwight] Ashton asked me to join in Year 8. Now I think it is beautiful how Shakespeare expresses human emotion."

Matthew Lee and Harry White received Hamilton Boys High's first honours cap in theatre. Photo / Supplied

The two boys even received an honours cap in theatre as the first ones for their school.

Harry says: "This was a big thing for us, because when we started high school we saw the honours caps of the other students, but they were all for sports or academic achievements. So receiving one for theatre is very special to us."

Matthew's favourite play was Othello where he played the female character of Desdemona.

"[That's] the play that got me passionate. I worked really hard for this [role] and the end product was amazing. Some parents even recognised me afterwards saying 'You were the one playing Desdemona'. This meant a lot to me."

He says that in Shakespearean times it was normal for men to play female roles because women weren't allowed in theatre."

Matthew and Harry say that at Hamilton Boys, the plays would mix the traditional with the new.

Says Matthew: "We take the story and emotions and make it weird and abstract... [but] we keep it traditional in language."

Eden says her school keeps it very traditional. "We only add twists sometimes, but when we do, [the end products] turn out pretty cool."

Eden Peters (second from left) with fellow actresses Katie Denize (left), Amanda Potgieter (centre) and Stella Boland (right). Photo / Supplied

Harry says it was quite easy to fall in love with Shakespeare.

"We translate and break the text down to the meaning to understand it better. If you think about it, the time it was written in doesn't really matter, because some aspects [can be transferred to our time]."

The three aspiring actors look forward to the Globe experience next year.

Harry says: "I can't wait to spend time with like-minded people, learning heaps and just being around creative minds."

Eden says her favourite part is seeing the other 21 members of the cast again.

"Getting to perform with the people that we bonded with and sharing this moment [on the Globe stage] will be great."

The three young actors have just graduated high school, none of them is going in to acting fulltime. While Harry will be studying film in Wellington, Eden will start an apprenticeship as a fabrication engineer and Matthew wants to go into politics.

Matthew says that theatre taught him a lot. "It gave me the ability to reach out to the community. Grant Robertson once said he wanted to be an actor or a lawyer when he grew up. Now he chose the best of both worlds and became a politician."

The cost to be a part of SGCNZ YSC 2022 is around $9600 per person. If you would like to support the young actors visit their Givealittle page here.