Kate O’Neill has always loved Shakespeare. In fact, she comes from a long line of Shakespeare lovers ….. her maternal great grandfather was a drama teacher and producer who wrote his own plays and ran residential Shakespeare courses in the summer holidays. Kate’s childhood visits to The Globe Theatre in London with her grandmother left her spellbound by the language, theatricality, history and costumes that she found there.
Fast forward a few years and the adult Kate, now living in Hertfordshire, enjoyed taking part in historical re-enactments at Kentwell Hall in Suffolk, an experience which fuelled her interest in taking on a character. “You see a different side to people when they’re dressed up and in character,” Kate tells me. Together with a group of friends, she went on to hold a very successful read-through of “The Tempest”.
Having recently moved to Cambridge, Kate now plans to replicate that here as a way to get like-minded people together in a collaborative spirit. This will be a very informal group, meeting maybe three or four times a year and it’s for everybody, whether you’re a total Shakespeare nut, a keen drama person or if you don’t know much about any of that but would like to find out more.
The first meeting is on Saturday 3 February at the Salisbury Arms. Kate’s had a good response already and she’s looking forward to finding out which of Shakespeare’s plays people like and to arranging a date and venue for a read-through. Think “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in Kate’s pretty courtyard garden or, should anyone in the group have a property with a balcony, “Romeo and Juliet”. So many possibilities ….. and as The Bard himself wrote, “All the world’s a stage”.
Facebook: Cambridge Shakespeare Read-through Group
Salisbury Arms, 76 Tenison Road, Cambridge CB1 2DW
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