Shakespeare Festival in Lancaster

Description

Lancaster's Season of Shakespeare is a month long celebration of England's greatest playwright. With performances, talks and lectures, visual art exhibitions and a number of free events in and around the City, there is plenty to see and do.

Tuesday 21 – Saturday 25 February
At the Dukes Theatre in the Rake, Northern Broadsides (in partnership with the New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-under-Lyme) presents

LOVE`S LABOUR`S LOST by William Shakespeare, Directed by Barrie Rutter.

Tickets from £5 - £18.50. Various times. Call the Dukes on 01524 598500 or book online - www.dukes-lancaster.org

Tuesday 28 February – Saturday 24 March at Lancaster Castle at 7.30pm (no performances on 1st, 4th, 11th, 12th, 18th March)
Demi-paradise productions present:

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, Directed by Sue McCormick

Tickets for Much Ado About Nothing go on sale on Monday 30 January at 9am at Lancaster Castle - Buy tickets in person from Lancaster Castle or call 01524 64998. Tickets: £12 - £24

Thursday 1 March National Theatre Live present:

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS Directed by Nicholas Hytner

Screened live into The Dukes Cinema, Lancaster at 6.45pm. Tickets - £13/£12 (concession) from the Dukes.

Wednesday 7 - Saturday 10 March at 7.30pm at the Dukes Theatre in Lancaster:

ROMEO AND JULIET performed by Lancaster Girls` Grammar and Lancaster Royal Grammar Schools.

Tickets £10 (concessions £8) from the Dukes.

Shakespeare in Film at The Dukes -
As part of Lancaster’s Season of Shakespeare, The Dukes will be screening two very different Shakespeare adaptations.

Coriolanus is a contemporary adaptation starring and directed by Ralph Fiennes on Friday 17- Sunday 19 February

Throne of Blood is a re-telling of Macbeth by legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa shown on March 12 at 8.35pm.

Tickets to see Coriolanus (15) and Throne of Blood (PG) are each priced £5.50(£4.50 concessions). To book, call The Dukes box office on 01524 598500 or visit www.dukes-lancaster.org

GUIDED WALKS:

`Lancaster in Shakespeare`s Time` free guided walks around Lancaster on Saturday 25 February and Saturday 10 March from 11.00 until 12.30. The walks start at the Visitor Information Centre in the Storey Centre on Meeting House Lane - call 01524 582394 to reserve your place.

Whether or not Shakespeare ever visited Lancashire, he was certainly familiar with the word ‘Lancaster’. John of Gaunt and the Dukes of Lancaster are inextricably linked with both his history plays and Lancaster Castle’s main gateway. Add to this the trial and execution of the ‘Pendle Witches’ in the town amid the on-going ‘witch hysteria’ only a few years after Shakespeare had written ‘Macbeth’ and there seems every reason to come on a Guided Walk with a Blue Badge Guide, around the City to discover the Lancaster of the Elizabethan and early Jacobean period.

TALKS AND WORKSHOPS:

Wednesday 22nd February - An Introduction to Love's Labour's Lost at The Dukes
This talk will introduce the play as giving a surprisingly modern take on courtship and romance in its use of comic effects and its unusual ending. It will offer ways into the production by considering how the battle of the sexes, the characters' journeys to maturity and the 'great feast of languages' are represented.
Delivered by Liz Oakley-Brown (Lancaster University)
Length: 30 mins (6.30 p.m – 7.00 p.m.)
Cost: free to Love’s Labour’s Lost ticket holders Date:

Thursday 23 February - Shakespeare and Love – A Practical Drama Workshop at The Dukes
'Love is blind' (Merchant of Venice 2.6) 'Love is a devil' (Love's Labour's Lost 4.3), 'Love is as a fever' (Sonnet 147); 'Love is all truth' (Venus and Adonis 857), 'Love is merchandized' (Sonnet 102). As these definitions show, Shakespeare's view of love is paradoxical. This workshop (for which no previous experience of drama work is required), will take a range of contrasting examples to explore the apparently infinite variety of love in Shakespeare.
Delivered by: Professor Alison Findlay and Dr Eleanor Rycroft (Lancaster University) at The Dukes
Length: 1 hour 30 (5.30pm – 7pm)
Cost: Free although tickets are limited, reserve from The Dukes Box Office

Thursday 23 February - Shakespeare - The Catholic Connections at St Peter's Cathedral Social Centre, Balmoral Road, Lancaster
Was William Shakespeare a Roman Catholic? Did he work for some of Lancashire's wealthiest recusant families? Discover the answers to these and many other questions at this public talk by Richard Wilson, professor in English Literature at the University of Cardiff.
Length: 1 hour (7.30pm – 8.30pm)
Cost: Free, no need to book just turn up. Refreshments will be served.

Friday 24 - Sunday 26th February - Shakespeare Inside - Out: Depth/Surface/Meaning British Shakespeare Association 10th Anniversary Conference
Shakespeare's texts produce meaning by turning insides out. We are drawn into the plays and poems from the outside through surfaces: books, screens, words, objects, costumes, actors' faces and bodies, and via effects like music, laughter, tears or movement. The texts, meanwhile, turn deep human questions, emotions, subjectivities outwards by projecting them as words and performance. This conference, which is designed to appeal to members of the public, teachers and theatre practitioners as well as academics, will explore the dynamic relationship between surface and depth via a series of lectures, practical workshops, interviews, panel discussions, academic papers, and a film screening. Speakers include: Professor Andrew Gurr; Professor Kate McLuskie; Professor Jean E. Howard; Barrie Rutter (Northern Broadsides); Cicely Berry and Alycia Smith-Howard (RSC); David Thacker; John Russell Brown.

Sunday 26th February - Shakespeare Bites Back! at The Dukes
Professor Stanley Wells and Dr Paul Edmondson Stand Up for Shakespeare as the Author of his Works. Provoked in part by Roland Emmerich's film Anonymous, Professor Stanley Wells and Dr Paul Edmondson are leading an ambitious and vigorous campaign on behalf of The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in defence of Shakespeare's authorship of his works. In this entertaining and informative presentation they will discuss the rise of the phenomenon of anti-Shakespearianism, demonstrate its fallacies, and propose some strategies to counteract it.
Delivered by Professor Stanley Wells (Chairman of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust) in conversation with Paul Edmondson, (Director of Education at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust) at The Dukes
Length: 1 hour (approx)
Cost: Free although tickets are limited, reserve from The Dukes Box Office Date: TBC

Saturday 10 March
ELART Productions present:

The Play’s the Thing! at the Ashton Memorial, Williamson Park
An afternoon of famous Shakespeare scenes. Meet Juliet, Henry V, Cleopatra, the Mechanicals and many more: drama, music and lots of comedy!
Length: 1 hour 20 (2pm – 3.20pm)
Cost: £8/£6 (includes wine or a soft drink) call The Dukes on 01524 598500

Friday 16 & Saturday 17 March
Demi Paradise Productions presents:

Isabella: Measure for Measure Act 6
At the end of Measure for Measure, the novice nun Isabella is left in an unresolved position that Shakespeare-lovers have debated for centuries. This original monologue, written and directed by Sue McCormick and performed by Amy Rhiannon Worth is an imagining for modern audiences of what Isabella did next.
at The Dukes
Length: 45 minutes (8pm – 8.45pm)
Cost: £5 call The Dukes on 01524 598500