Ringplay on Aug 07 2009 | Filed under: Annoucements, Productions
We’re still looking for a few good men.
All the female parts have been cast, but we’re still looking for some men for The Tempest. We’ll be auditioning at the Hub, Bay and Colebrooke, between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Saturday August 8th, 2009.
Audition pieces may be downloaded here.
Ringplay on Aug 05 2009 | Filed under: General Theatre, Productions
In 2001, the inaugural Ringplay production was the Bahamian Macbeth. An adaptation of Shakespeare’s original play for a Bahamian setting and audience, it had been created originally during the 1970s by the late Rosanna Seaborn (aka Todd), and in 2000, the newly-formed Ringplay Productions modernized it for the 21st century. In it, Macbeth was transformed into an ambitious politician who kills his Prime Minister to achieve his dream. In the first production of Ringplay’s Macbeth, the witches were talk show hosts who controlled the play literally from above; Malcolm was the Deputy Prime Minister, and help was sought from Washington (in the second they were obeah practitioners). The adaptation sacrificed some things — like the full significance of the Elizabethan cosmology — but it gained others.
Image from Zecora Ura's 2006 adaptation of The Tempest
This year, Ringplay is working on a similar adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Widely understood to be Shakespeare’s swan song, the original play tells the story of Prospero, the scholar-magician who loses his dukedom to his more ambitious brother, and who, after being exiled from his home, winds up on an island whose chief inhabitants are a legion of spirits, and Caliban, one creature who takes some kind of human form. Prospero settles on the island with his daughter Miranda, and he raises her, and tries to tame the wild being he meets there. The Tempest of the title refers to the magical hurricane Prospero conjures up to shipwreck his brother and the king who had assisted the overthrow, and the play unfolds under Prospero’s power.
In Shakespeare’s original, Prospero is the rightful Duke of Milan, his brother Antonio is the usurper, and Alonso is the medieval King of Naples, Antonio’s ally and backer. In the Ringplay adaptation, the kingdoms are twenty-first century hotel conglomerates; Alonso is a woman, and the stakes are the control of Prosperity Cay, an island in The Bahamas where the two great companies, Naples-America and Hotel Milan, hope perhaps to build their next great joint resort. The sea they are crossing is the Bahamian branch of the Atlantic, the spirits are local deities, and Ariel the head spirit takes on forms that include a chickcharney.
The Tempest is a play that’s full of illusion and spectacle. Nothing in the play is as it appears to be. Caliban is written as an uncultured brute, but he has the most beautiful language in the entire play; Ariel, on the other hand, is reduced to singing some of the silliest songs ever penned for the stage. Prospero forces his enemies to feel loss and remorse, and in the end forgives them; he creates the best circumstances he can for his daughter to fall in love, and then forbids her to exercise her feelings; and in the end he sets all the spirits free, renounces his art, and turns away from his island to take up the reins of industry once again.
The Tempest goes into rehearsal on August 10th, and will be performed for school audiences and for the general public during Shakespeare in Paradise between 5th and 12th October 2009. Make plans now to see it — the thing about plays is that once they close, there’s no guarantee they’ll be mounted again!
Ringplay on Aug 02 2009 | Filed under: Productions, Shakespeare in Paradise
Yesterday we held the first auditions for The Tempest, Ringplay’s signature production for Shakespeare in Paradise.
Running the auditions was our guest director Craig Pinder, a Bahamian actor whose career on London’s West End includes featured performances in Les Misérables and Mamma Mia! as well as numerous productions with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Craig’s co-directing the production of The Tempest along with Trini director Patti-Anne Ali, and in conjunction with Nicolette Bethel and Philip A. Burrows of Ringplay Productions and Shakespeare in Paradise. He’s also playing the part of Prospero in the production.
The auditions were held at The Hub, East Bay Street, and got a turnout of some 18 people, some of whom were trained actors, others who were raw talents, and we had some really happy surprises. The problem isn’t whether we have enough talent for The Tempest now — it’s how we can use the talent we have.
Check back for photographs of the auditions, taken by David Burrows!
Ringplay on Jul 31 2009 | Filed under: Festivals, Productions, Ringplay Productions, Shakespeare in Paradise
The first auditions for The Tempest by William Shakespeare, adapted and dramaturged for a Bahamian setting by Nicolette Bethel, Travis Cartwright-Carroll, Reva Sharma, and Toni Francis, will be held tomorrow, Saturday, August 1st.
The Tempest is the signature piece of this year’s Shakespeare in Paradise theatre festival (October 5th – 12th, 2009).
Auditions will be held on Saturday, August 1st beginning at 11:00 am at The Hub, Bay Street and Colebrook Lane.
The parts that are available can be found here.
Information about the directors of this production can be found here.
You are asked to come with a prepared piece of no more than two minutes in length. You will also be asked to read either a monologue or a part of a scene from the play.
You can download those pieces here.
Future auditions will take place for Music of The Bahamas and we will post that information as soon as it becomes available.
If you have any questions you can email us at admin@shakespeareinparadise.org
Ringplay on Jul 07 2009 | Filed under: Productions, Shakespeare in Paradise
Three things maybe you should know about Shakespeare in Paradise.
Here’s the current line-up for the Festival week, with Bahamian productions included:
THE TEMPEST by William Shakespeare, dramaturged by Nicolette Bethel, Toni Francis, Travis Cartwright-Carroll, and Reva Sharma
Producer: Ringplay Productions
Directors: Patti-Anne Ali (Trinidad and Tobago), Craig Pinder (Bahamas/UK)
ZORA by Laurence Holder, a one-woman play about the life of African-American folklorist and novelist Zora Neale Hurston
Featured performer: Kim Brockington (USA)
ONE WHITE ONE BLACK by Frank McField, the Caymanian two-man play that took CARIFESTA X Guyana by storm in 2008
Director: Henry Muttoo (Cayman/Guyana)
SHOWS by KEN CORSBIE, the Guyanese-American storyteller and performer whose return to Guyana for CARIFESTA X was hailed as the high point of the festival
Featured performer: Ken Corsbie (USA/Guyana)
LOVE IN TWO ACTS, two one-act plays by Alfred Sutro and Anton Chekhov, adapted for The Bahamas by Matthew Kelly
Producer: Track Road Theatre Foundation
Director: Matthew Kelly
MUSIC OF THE BAHAMAS, the Bahamian docu-musical based on E. Clement Bethel’s master’s thesis, adapted for the stage by Philip A. Burrows and Nicolette Bethel
Producer: Ringplay Productions
Director: Philip A. Burrows
Ringplay on Jun 04 2009 | Filed under: Festivals, General Theatre, Shakespeare in Paradise
So what possesses a group of people to up and decide to create a theatre festival with no money to speak of, nothing but a dream?
For us, it all began just over ten years ago. Back then, Ringplay was just about a twinkle in the founders’ eyes. The Dundas Repertory was still going — it was in its last year — and Ringplay had just been imagined, though not really formed, during the summer of 1998. Philip and I (Nico) were living on the West Coast of Canada, teaching at Pearson College where Philip had established a Theatre Arts programme. Now if you know anything about Pearson College and the United World College system, academics are only part of the equation; students at Pearson are expected to do other things as well. Instead of a fall break, students get a Project Week — a time when they go off and engage in a week of activities that have some constructive result. And the President of the college had suggested to Philip — had strongly suggested — that for Project Week the Theatre Arts students go to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon — a seventeen-hour drive by van from Victoria.
Well, when your boss makes a suggestion like that, specially when that boss is responsible for getting you your job, you don’t say no, so off we went. We’d never heard of OSF, and we really didn’t have huge expectations — and the festival blew us out of the water. We saw the best week of theatre we’d ever seen, no exceptions (Broadway and the West End included), and for extremely reasonable prices Stateside — tickets were $35 and thereabouts. Ashland is a tiny town, perhaps the same size as downtown Nassau, not as large as the span of Nassau from Mackey Street to Nassau Street (Victoria to West is more like it), with three theatres, and the Festival runs the economy of the town from February to November every year. And the quality!
Philip and I were blown away, and as for the students — who, remember, were attending an international school and for many of whom English was not a first language — they were converted. Philip and I returned in fall 1999, and when we left Pearson in the summer of 2000, Ashland was a major stop on the way. That summer, we were met in Oregon by Philip’s brother David (a.k.a. the President of Ringplay), and he had his turn to be blown away. (You can see the blow by blow of our time in Ashland in 2000 here, at our proto-blog, our account of crossing the USA in pre-blog software days.)
And before we left, we’d asked the question. If Ashland can do it, how come Nassau can’t?
So there you have it, the beginning of the dream. And now, we’re going to find out. If Ashland can do it …
Ringplay on Jun 01 2009 | Filed under: Annoucements, Events, Festivals
For those of you who have given up on Ringplay and this blog, know that, like bad children, silence means that we’re up to no good.
And here’s the result of all of that silence:
Ringplay Productions is excited to announce the First Annual International Shakespeare in Paradise Theatre Festival, to be held in Nassau, Bahamas, 5th-12th October, 2009.
Shakespeare in Paradise celebrates the best in World, Caribbean, African, and African American theatre, all presented in historic and exciting spaces in New Providence.
This year’s inaugural festival will feature Shakespeare’s The Tempest; Zora, a one-woman play by Laurence Holder about the life of African-American anthropologist and writer Zora Neale Hurston, whose work in Georgia, Florida, The Bahamas and the Caribbean remains inspirational today; and One White One Black, a two-hander by Caymanian Frank McField, a play that wowed audiences in CARIFESTA X Guyana.
For more information go here: http://shakespeareinparadise.org
And watch this space.
