"Julius Caesar". Ormiston Bushfield Academy, Peterborough
Phyllida Lloyd's 2012 production of Julius Caesar is one of the defining Shakespeare interpretations of the 21st century. By setting it in a women's prison, and by creating the compelling illusion that the cast was made up of real convicts, it gave a voice to the voiceless, a vital feminist perspective to a traditionally macho story, and – perhaps most revolutionary of all – it smashed to smithereens the so-called suspension of disbelief. Audiences could not be sure whether they were seeing illusion or reality. When prison warders stopped the show halfway through to remove an actor who'd misbehaved, we didn't know what to believe any more. It stopped being just about Brutus, Cassius and co, and became a vehicle for an oppressed, imprisoned minority to express themselves; to experience, for a couple of hours, freedom. Orange is the New Black meets Spartacus.
The show was a worldwide sensation, playing in London, on Broadway, on tour. The BBC filmed it. Awards piled up on mantelpieces. It even led to two more productions done in the same style, The Tempest and Henry IV. All of them starred the phenomenal national treasure that is Harriet Walter. She’s one of our most celebrated actors, a double Olivier winner, star of stage, film and TV, and a Dame to boot. Last year she was the lead in The House of Bernarda Alba at the National Theatre. Truly, the Lloyd/Walter Julius Caesar bestrid the world like a colossus.
And yet here it is, at the Ormiston Bushfield Academy in Peterborough, with Walter and many of the other original cast members, performing – for free, and at 10.30 in the morning – to groups of secondary school children.
Why?
The answer is that Lloyd, Walter and their colleagues believe in the power of theatre as education. And they know that what they created has a life beyond middle-class audiences in search of the latest clever, bardic twist. They wanted to make a difference. And through the Royal Shakespeare Company’s First Encounters programme, Caesar lives again, enthralling teenagers who have never seen a play in their lives, leaving memories that will stay with them for ever, and making them think about issues that affect their own lives.
Let's be clear. Harriet Walter doesn't need to do this. Nor does the charismatic Jenny Jules, who revives the role of Cassius she first played in 2012. Nor do any of the other great actors who've made the jump from West End to West Yaxley. Caesar himself is played by Jackie Clune, whom I last saw stealing the Rocky Horror Show (as the Narrator) at Oxford’s New Theatre in front of 1500 fans.
The RSC’s Education department has been running First Encounters for the last ten years. Under the inspired leadership of Jacqui O’Hanlon, it takes 80-minute versions of Shakespeare plays to regional schools, and helps thousands of young people and their teachers across the country experience the power of Shakespeare’s language every year.
The impact is immediately obvious. The fourteen-year-olds whisper questions to each other throughout. They yelp with delight at music they recognise from their own playlists. They gasp as an actor playing a dog is shot by a flunky. When Walter sits in the auditorium to soliloquise on Brutus’ moral quandary, the students prickle with tension at her proximity. But the true breakthroughs happen at those moments when the delicate membrane between reality and fiction bursts: when Walter breaks off from mourning the death of Portia – still in character as a prisoner – to beg the audience to be quiet; when Cinna the Poet’s death scene is interrupted by prison guards; and when, as the women are led away at the end, Walter shouts to the youngsters, ‘Do something about this! We can’t – we’re stuck in our cells!’ These are the thin moments when the illusion of theatre is stretched to breaking point, and the meaning of Shakespeare’s text pours through the portal like a deluge.
All this would be enough to justify the partnership between Lloyd’s social-justice-focused production company KPPL and the RSC. But the performance is only half the story. After lunch, the experience continues with a workshop.
You’d have thought the actors might have a lie-down after the show. But Jenny Jules and Harriet Walter are back again, inexhaustible, participating with the students, improvising in little groups with teenagers who gradually lose their inhibitions and start to express their feelings about what they’ve seen. The session is a crucial part of the process, led by Regional Schools Manager Ellie Warr, a theatre-maker with a natural gift for teaching, and Nyasha Gudo, a director and learning practitioner at the RSC. And if you thought the RSC Director of Learning might stay back in Stratford, planning the next season, think again. Jacqui O’Hanlon is also there, probing, encouraging and supporting, one on one. The message is clear: every child matters. And these children respond. They re-enact moments of the play that affected them. They discuss the pros and cons of each side. And they produce ideas that surprise even the facilitators who’ve been doing this for years. At a time when the Humanities are fighting for space in education, ventures like this underline the vital importance of culture. If we lose our culture, we lose our civilisation. And if we lose that, who are we?
Most reviews function as a consumer guide to whether a show is worth seeing or not. On this occasion that’s irrelevant. What matters here is the impact on schoolkids of an experience that will not just make them more interested in Shakespeare. It will invite them to think about the dehumanising conditions faced by many women prisoners in the UK. And – perhaps even more importantly than that – it will help them see beyond the binary morality of social media, to a world of true complexity and humanity.
Comments
Post a Comment