Shakespeare in the house

SHAKESPEARE IN THE HOUSE

DREAMSTUFF Youth Theatre, the stage production unit of Young Irish Film Makers will stage four of Shakespeare’s plays as part of their 2nd Shakespeare in the House festival in association with Rothe House on Saturday 27th and 28th June 2009.

The performances will be on a custom-built stage as open air productions in the middle yard of Rothe House. The yard will be converted to resemble a Tudor open air playhouse.

All Dreamstuff junior and senior actors will be involved in the productions. The junior company (8 to 12 year olds) are restaging last year’s comedy hit play ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ as well taking on ‘Macbeth’ which the seniors staged last year.

The senior company (aged 13 to 17) will stage ‘Romeo and Juliet’, and the hilarious ‘The Comedy of Errors’.

Each play is abridged and runs about 45 minutes. Two plays will be staged each afternoon in the original Shakespeare Middle English text. Over 40 young people will be on stage for the plays and our friends, ‘The Devious Theatre Company’, will perform ‘Shakespeare in Bits in and around the house’ during the festival.

For young people there will be a number of fun events – a Shakespeare Speech competition, a 60 Second Shakespeare Film as well as a Shakespeare painting competition for children. 

There will be a fun Shakespeare for Fun improvisation session each day. Finally, there will be the Shakespeare House Band playing for audiences on both afternoons.

Rothe House is a historic house in Kilkenny and a unique example of a Tudor merchant’s townhouse in Ireland. The building of Rothe House and Shakespeare’s stage writing career almost exactly mirror each other.

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, in England in 1564. While his exact birth date is unknown, it is most often celebrated on April 23, the feast of St George.

The building of Rothe House began 30 years later in 1594 by John Rothe Fitz Piers and 1594-95 was the first performance of ‘Romeo and Juliet’, ‘The Comedy of Errors ‘ and  ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ was first staged between 1595 and 1596.

The third house was completed in 1610, the year Shakespeare retired from the theatre and six years before his death on April 23, 1616. The first performance of ‘Macbeth’ is not known but scholars place it somewhere between 1603 and 1607.

The earliest account of a performance of the play is April 1611, when  Simon Forman recorded seeing it at the  Globe Theatre.

Dreamstuff Youth Theatre has already staged full scale productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth by William Shakespeare in the Watergate Theatre.
Several of the young performers have gone on the third level degree courses in Drama in Ireland and England.