Six schools to present three evenings of Shakespeare
Senior schools across the Island will join forces to re-create some of William Shakespeare's plays during the Bermuda Shakespeare Schools Festival.
Saltus Grammar School, Bermuda High School for Girls, Somersfield Academy, Warwick Academy, Cedarbridge Academy and Berkeley Institute will perform at the festival from October 19 to 21.
The festival takes place at Berkeley. Saltus will take the stage first with its version of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' followed by BHS with 'The Taming of the Shrew' on the first night.
The second night will see 'Much Ado About Nothing' performed by Somersfield and 'Romeo and Juliet' by Warwick Academy.
On the final night, Cedarbridge Academy will perform 'Macbeth' and Berkeley will close the festival with 'The Tempest' in honour of Bermuda's 400th anniversary. Performances start every night at 7.30 p.m.
Festival organiser Josephine Kattan said there are on average 20 students from each school taking part.
"This festival was started in the year 2000 in England. Chris Grace [the organiser] came with the idea of students being allowed to work on professional stages and do abridged versions of Shakespeare. He started up the festival with four schools in Great Britain and in 2007 there were 25,000 theatres across Great Britain working with over 100 productions of Shakespeare."
Mrs. Kattan took Berkeley drama students to the festival and then brought the idea back to Bermuda.
The festival is now called Shakespeare 24 meaning that there will be performances around the world 24 hours a day during that week.
Each production will be 45 minutes long and they are not allowed to have any stage props. But the actors can have costumes and hand-held props.
The difference with this year's festival is that there will be prizes up for grabs. The top three performers from each play will receive a monetary prize.
Mrs. Kattan added: "It's going to be exciting. They really will enjoy it. Last year after the first night, we had students fighting to get in but there were no tickets. They wanted to see how the productions fared. You really get a buzz on stage."
