King Lear may have been a tragedy, but not for Garin College’s team of Shakespeare actors who will head to the national festival with their ‘Kardashians’ rendition of the Bard’s work.
Every year the Victoria University Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand Regional Festivals are held throughout the country to celebrate and explore the work of the Bard.
In eight weeks, secondary schools in Nelson-Tasman prepare either five or 15-minute extracts, mostly directed by students.
Some explore new ways of delivery, others present a traditional response to the text and the best performances are chosen to attend the national festival in Wellington at King’s Birthday weekend.
This year, Garin College performers were the winners of the five-minute with an extract from King Lear, which also gained them the award for choreography. Waimea College won the Best Tragedy Award for MacBeth and one of its actors, Maggie Paterson, received the award for Best Actor.
Garin College teacher of drama, Angela Thomsen, says the regional festival gives students the opportunity to immerse themselves and also reimagine William Shakespear’s words, from the text to real life.
She says the team of “keen and talented” drama students worked as a team to recreate Shakespeare in the style of the reality TV family, The Kardashians.
At Waimea College, the cast are huge fans of Shakespeare and one of them, Juliet Blythe, has read half a dozen of his stories.
“I like it because it’s a challenge for me to read and he manages to write about human experiences in a way that is so succinct and accurate that it’s enchanting.”
As another student Emma Brown says, Shakespeare also writes with humour.
“When people talk about Shakespeare, they think old and posh, but his jokes are really quite funny.”
