Director : Penny Tuerk

Movement Co-ordinator : Lindsay Kirby
Stage Manager : Alison Liney

JULIUS CAESAR, by William Shakespeare, adapted by Penny Tuerk

Performance dates and venues :

London : Performances will be in the period Monday 10th May – Saturday 22nd May (exact dates and times to be confirmed) at St. Leonard’s Church, 119, Shoreditch High St. E1 6JN. This is a stone’s throw from our proposed new home and has strong associations with the first "Theatre".

Paris : The company will be in Paris from Saturday May 29th to Monday June 7th, performing at the Théâtre de Verdure in the Jardin Shakespeare, Bois de Boulogne.
Performances will be on Tuesday 1st, Wednesday 2nd, Thursday 3rd, Saturday 5th June at 7.00 p.m., Tuesday 1st &. Thursday 3rd June at 12.00 noon and Saturday 5th & Sunday 6th June at 3.30 p.m.

For those who do not know it, this is an idyllic open air theatre where we have been presenting an annual Shakespeare production for nearly twenty years. Everyone is expected to pay their own travel and living expenses.

Formal rehearsals will begin in the week starting Sunday 7th March, but the cast will need to be available for some preliminary work in the preceding weeks.

The director writes :
Julius Caesar is a fascinating play to be working on in the current political climate. It was probably written as a warning against regime change and it makes the point very effectively. The conspirators succeed in their plot against Caesar, but precipitate a bloody civil war that destroys them all. The subtle inter-play of ambition, honour, loyalty, love and self-interest among the patricians is set against the constant presence of the unstable Roman mob and topped off with a master-class in spin and the manipulation of public opinion.

Style : The Chorus
Even by the standards of other Shakespeare plays Julius Caesar has an unusually diverse and rapidly changing cast of characters (37 named parts of whom only three go the whole way through the play). I intend to build the production round a 'chorus' of about 10 people. They can be male or female and any age. Women chorus-members may take nominally male roles. They will sometimes work together, taking speeches that would normally be assigned to one person and sometimes step out of the group to play an individual part. Between them they will present all the characters except Brutus, Cassius, Mark Antony and Julius Caesar. The way the chorus operates will set the style for the production, so I am delighted that Lindsay Kirby, who many of you will know from her work as fight arranger in a number of recent productions, is on the production team. She will work with us to develop an approach that blends the various elements into a theatrically satisfying whole that will be fun to do and intriguing to watch.

The cast is :

Julius Caesar : Brutus : Cassius : Mark Antony : Chorus :

Michael Mayne Ed Malcomson Laurence Ward Gately Freeman Matthew Addison Barry Clarke Simona Hughes John Morton Peter Novis Pam O’Brien Ed O’Shaughnessy Richard Pedersen Harriet Watson Jonathan Wober Aqil Zahid

If you have any questions about the production, please contact the director, Penny Tuerk, by E-mail.