WEEK 6 – YOUR PRODUCTION

Week 6 - Your Production


Research your own Shakespeare play: Hamlet, Richard III, Macbeth, Measure for Measure. What is the play about? When was it first performed? Find a contemporary production of the play you can get an idea of and research it in terms of concept, style, design, casting. Give some attention to your own character and their role in the play.

  • Measure for Measure was written between 1603 and 1604 is seen as one of Shakespeare’s problem plays due to its shift in mood. 
  • Measure for Measure was performed by Shakespeare's company at the Court of James I on December 26, 1604.
  • The piece takes place in Vienna which is filled with brothels and the city's population lacks morality, but despite this the Duke isn't willing to use his authority to fix the city and instead chooses to leave, dressed as a Friar, leaving Angelo in charge who begins to make his own changes. 
  • The play was first published in 1623 in the First Folio.
Contemporary 

Measure For Measure/Dominic Dromgoole
Measure for Measure at the Globe, 2015; photo by Tristram Shenton
  • The early scenes are full of comic moments, pratfalls and cursing, suck, sweat and skin – more than a dash of Blackadder. 
  • Claire van Kampen’s music, with it Balkan energy, adds to this sense of aliveness. But the comedy is continually undercut by moments of ugliness: women are dragged off to be punished for their transgressions, branded like animals.
  • There are times when it’s not stretching things to put this play on a continuum with Gary Owen’s Violence and Son.
  • I found the staging to be not significantly different to ours in terms of the sides of where the audience are located, but rather their distance form the stage. The audience are pretty much touching the stage with their hands and are mere inches form the the actors.
  • The stage's design is very grand as the set has incorporated a lot of gold and marble into its design. The set appears to be based off of the design of a court in Shakespeare's era.



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