On the Road
On the Road |
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"Performing Shakespeare to any audience in any place is a challenge at the best of times. Hence, performing – and effectively conveying – Shakespeare's syntactical complexity and thematic intricacy to a foreign audience in a converted bread oven after several days without sleep could be seen as mission impossible. And yet, for the last 43 years, the University's European Theatre Group (ETG) has been doing exactly that: touring large-scale productions of Shakespeare's greatest plays to the continent; performing in diverse, demanding and sometimes downright dingy theatres, and surviving on very little sleep indeed.
Before Christmas, 25 intrepid students (and a flirtatious, bald coach driver called Len) departed Cambridge for the start of this winter's tour of The Tempest. Three weeks later we returned, having travelled 3,000 miles in a feet-numbingly cold coach, performed in ten venues and absorbed the sights, smells and dubious culinary offerings of Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg and even Liechtenstein. Somewhat understandably, we were exhausted.
Auditoriums, audiences and their subsequent reactions varied enormously from place to place and arriving at a new venue the team rarely knew what to expect. Even if we thought we knew, we were generally proved wrong. If we'd been 'reliably' informed that a theatre could accommodate our large lighting truss or could provide enough power to operate all the technical effects, then we could reliably presume it couldn't. But whether the venue was microscopic or a continental counterpart to Wembley Stadium, fantastically well-equipped or an empty shell, the entire company worked together to turn whatever space we had into a fully operational theatre, often with just minutes to go before an audience streamed through the doors.
These audiences varied from 500 university students in a cavernous Zurich theatre who cheered the cast for three long curtain calls, to a rabble of restless seven-year-olds in a cafeteria in Milan who picked their noses throughout Prospero's most lyrical speeches. It was essential, therefore, that the production was adaptable and, most crucially, accessible to all. If Shakespeare is to be truly accessible (and if it's not accessible, what's the point?) then it needs to be more than just hollow words spoken on a bare stage. Although it seems an obvious thing to say, the plays were written to be performed, not merely read and certainly not to be studied and scrutinised by long-suffering A-Level students. To make a play like The Tempest truly come to life, we made a special point of emphasising the musical, magical and visual elements of the play. We wanted a Tempest that was enjoyable to watch, that told the story and conveyed the characters (as we interpreted them) with clarity and that would still make sense to people who only understood one word in every sentence.
In venues where Shakespeare is rarely performed, and in some where no theatre is ever staged, a motley group of English students enthusiastically staging a colourful production is a much anticipated and embraced community event. As such, many venues have been hosting ETG productions of Shakespeare for 20 or more years, aware of the educational, cultural and social benefits of the tour. But it would be fair to say that the company itself benefits most from the touring experience. Drama in Cambridge is often accused of being overly safe, student-orientated and sheltered from the outside world. For everyone involved, the experience of staging a touring show outside Cambridge taught us valuable lessons about playing to new audiences on different stages and the consequent company spirit and sense of teamwork was unparalleled."
Matt Applewhite was director of The Tempest