Buzz With Danu!!!! - Shakespeare in the Park 

Today on Buzz with Danu #SupportingTalent I speak to the Workshop Players as they celebrate the life of the one and only William Shakespeare. In partnership with British Council Sri Lanka, the Workshop Players present Colombo’s first ‘Shakespeare In the Park’ festival, consisting of three of Shakespeare’s plays currently being studied as texts by local O/L, A/L and university students. 

A Midsummer Night's Dream (28 - 29 April) dispirited the weather gods stressing people out, and it was a good start to the festival. 
This week will be The Merchant Of Venice (07 - 08 May) and Othello (14 - 15 May). 

Hope you will make it, and it's all FREE! 

What made the Workshop Players come up with Shakespeare in the Park? 

The main objective of this festival is to create a platform for interested students (A/L grades and University), theatre enthusiasts and the general public to collectively experience and appreciate Shakespeare’s magnificence, especially keeping in line with the global celebration of the playwright’s 400th death Anniversary. Also having visited Broadway many times and witnessing the interest shown in Shakespeare in the Park at the Delacorte theatre in Central Park, I always wanted to have a similar event in Sri Lanka and urged on by Shanuki de Alwis, the Viharamahadevi Amphitheatre, with the entire park’s rehabilitation, seemed the ideal place. 

What are the chosen plays and why? 

The plays chosen are A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice and Othello. These plays are in the London and Local O/L and A/L syllabus. Therefore, students can really experience the plays without just reading it off a page and can see experienced actors on stage. 

How has the feedback been, after the first week? 

We have had a really good response, we had over 1200 people attending “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and what was great that although it did threaten to rain on the 2nd night, the audience just pulled out umbrellas and stayed on. We are hoping that we will have a similar turnout for the next two plays as well. Many theatre lovers including our sponsors and producers from TV stations came up to me, thanked me for this event, and wished that it would be an annual event. 

Tell me about the cast. 

We held a two-day workshop on Shakespeare in January and there we were able to scout out some new talent. We also held auditions for all three plays in February and that saw a few old faces come in as well as a very good inflow of new actors and actresses. All them are really committed and have put in a lot of effort to put on three really good shows. 

What's next for the WSP? 

Well, we won’t be doing a musical this year, Instead we will be staging Arthur Miller’s “A View from the Bridge” which is also on the literature syllabus. 

Photograph credits - Andre Perera