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Night time is my time. I’m not talking about the onset of dusk as the daylight closes up but the real, dark depths of the night. It’s when I really come to life, in body and in mind. I can cope with mornings if I absolutely have to – just give me adequate space and time (I’d estimate an hour at the very least) by myself to come to terms with the birds chirping, the light glinting through the curtains and the general displacement I feel with being awake at that portion of the day. Afternoon is when things start to kick in, the cogs start to whir, the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. By evening I feel comfortable; on a particularly good day, positively chirpy. But it’s when the clock strikes twelve midnight – or slightly before – when I’m at my best. I like to think of it as a slight reversal of the Cinderella effect (not that my days are so oppressive or unbearable – that would be slightly too melodramatic); the world doesn’t lose its gloss or shine after that crucial hour, in fact all the stars and streetlights seem to shine that little bit brighter.

However, being a certified night-owl does have its drawbacks. Particularly in times of trouble, worry or just niggling annoyance, the dark hours can feel sometimes inescapable. Being both a creature of nocturnal habit and a lifelong over-thinker is certainly not a good combination. If thinking becomes its clearest in the shadows of night as opposed to the light of day then finding solace in sleep isn’t the easiest of tasks; there’s been many a time when each exceptionally early or very late - depending on how you choose to view it - hour has drifted by almost unnoticed while I endlessly toss and turn, trying to quiet my thoughts so I can get some shut-eye. Needless to say, counting neither the remaining hours until dawn breaks or sheep helps much (I do think that is something of a rural, rather than urban, myth…makes that’s why it doesn’t work for city-dwellers?) and I greet the new morning with a bigger sigh and sense of confusion than I would normally.

If anyone can write beautifully about a bout of insomnia – and dare I say it, even make it sound in parts something to be envied – then it is Shakespeare. As a writer, a playwright, a creative person, it is entirely understandable that Shakespeare himself would be all too familiar with a mind that awakens intensely at night; the idea of his soul having an ‘imaginary sight’ richly describes how it takes on a life of its own. Yet as ever with Shakespeare, there is more to this sonnet than meets the eye. It is not just creativity that stimulates, but also longing – not for sleep or rest, but for love. The mentions of ‘a journey in my head’ and the ‘zealous pilgrimage’ to a desired one seem almost pre-meditated, evoking more power and control over one’s faculties than physical exhaustion does. Perhaps sleep is overrated after all, if lack of it inspires such a wonderful sonnet.

Sonnet 27

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head,
To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired:
For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see
Save that my soul’s imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.
Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee and for myself no quiet find.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Merseyside Community Theatre, Alt Valley, 2010

Romeo and Juliet

The Reader Organisation, in partnership with Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service, Mersey Care NHS Trust, Cobalt Housing, Merseytravel,  Liverpool City Council and Liverpool PCT will be deliver a community production of Romeo and Juliet in August 2010. Full details will be announced shortly.

Please see our website for details of our previous Community Shakespeare production of The Winter’s Tale (Birkenhead Park 2008)

Applications are invited for the post of Designer for the 2010 Merseyside Community Theatre production of Romeo & Juliet.

The successful candidate will be responsible for the concept and delivery of the design, both set and costumes. You will have professional experience and be based locally, preferably with some experience of community work. You will work with the script, director, lighting and sound designers and oversee the whole creative process, ensuring that it is delivered on time and on budget. You will be working with a large team of community volunteers and willingness to work with non-professionals will be a key quality the Director and Producer will be seeking. The production will have 4 weeks rehearsal culminating in 6 performances at the end of August. You will also work on a project launch event scheduled for the end of April 2010.  Fee £3k.

Please send a letter of application and your CV to Zoe Gilling, Business Manager, The Reader Organisation. Applications must be received no later than 5.00pm Tuesday 16th March. No applications arriving after this time will be considered. Email applications are preferred: zoegilling@thereader.org.uk

Interviews will be held at The Reader Organisation offices, 19 Abercromby Square, Liverpool L69 7ZG, on the afternoon of Friday 19th March.

If you missed Why Reading Matters, which was broadcast on BBC Four last year, and feaures The Reader Organisation’s pioneering outreach project Get Into Reading, you can watch our part (from about five minutes in) here on YouTube:

The documentary, about the incredible power that reading unlocks in the brain,  also features Philip Davis, editor of The Reader magazine, investigating the ‘Shakespeared Brain’ – how the shapes of Shakespeare’s lines and sentences effect our minds:

Here I am, eating my lunch, at my desk, reading the news online (I know I should get outside but I will, later) and I come across a feature from the Guardian called, ‘Reclaim you lunch hour’. What’s it about? Seeing 45 minute theatre productions at London’s Bridewell Theatre in your lunch hour. Obviously, something will be lost in the shortening of the plays but what a backdrop to your sandwich munching. Click on the link above to watch a short video about the idea behind Lunchbox Theatre and the current production of Two Gentlemen of Verona. It’s certainly food for thought about how we spend our lunch hour.

Today is the day William Shakespeare, the greatest poet in the English language, was born in 1564 (although he was baptised on 26th April) and it is also the day he died in 1606. Today is also marks the anniversary of the deaths of Henry Vaughan (1695), William Wordsworth (1850), Rupert Brooke (1915). There is much to be remembered today but perhaps, it’s a day to be feared by poets, as regular contibutor to The Reader magazine, Ian McMillan, writes in today’s Guardian. On top of all this, it is, of course, also St. George’s Day!

Casi Dylan, Read to Lead Training Manager selects her favourite Shakespearean sonnet to share with you.

This sonnet is one of my all-time favourite poems. What appeals to me above all is its frankness – which sometimes borders on cheekiness – its down to earth sense of a woman I can imagine as a real person, as someone who has lived and loved. There is something comforting not only in the poet’s acceptance of imperfections in a lover, but also in his love’s ability to render those imperfections ‘rare’ and true, as opposed to ‘false’ comparisons too often associated with love poetry.

My Mistress’s Eyes Are Nothing Like The Sun (Sonnet 130)

My mistress’s eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lip’s red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun,
If hair be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
In some perfumes there is more delight
Than the breath with which my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know,
Music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

William Shakespeare

If you missed Why Reading Matters on BBC Four on Monday, you’re not too late to catch it: the programme is available to watch on BBC iplayer for the next five days.

The documentary, about the incredible power that reading unlocks in the brain,  features Philip Davis, editor of The Reader magazine, investigating the ‘Shakespeared Brain’ – how the shapes of Shakespeare’s lines and sentences effect our minds – and The Reader Organisation’s pioneering outreach project Get Into Reading.

We have varying physiological responses to Shakespeare, depending on whether we are reading or listening to works of the Bard, using and engaging different parts of the brain in each of these activities. Join Professor Philip Davis of the University of Liverpool and editor of The Reader magazine in a talk about the unique ways in which our minds respond to Shakespeare.

Friday 21 November, 1.00 – 2.00pm, Liverpool Everyman. Cost: £1.50 when booked with a theatre ticket for King Lear (starring Pete Postlethwaite). Contact the Everyman (0151 709 4776) to book a ticket.

Since 2002, Jane Davis, Director of The Reader Organisation, has had many Get Into Reading group members say, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could put on a play?”, a suggestion that, although attractive, was easily resistible. “Just think”, said Jane, “the work! The organisation! The cost!”. However, in 2006 she paid a visit to New York’s Central Park, attending attended the fabled free ‘Shakespeare in the Park’; she was inspired. With Liverpool ‘08 on the horizon and this year also being the National Year of Reading, Jane conceived the idea of bringing Shakespeare to Birkenhead Park. A couple of years later and thanks to many hard-working people, Wirral Community Shakespeare – organised by The Reader Organisation and Aspire Trust – performed five open-air performances of The Winter’s Tale.

The show was an astounding success, thrilling audiences and instilling enormous pride in everyone involved in the project. “Remarkable…a fantastic ensemble piece and great team effort of which all involved should be justifiably proud,” Liverpool Daily Post. Directed by Brookside’s Neil Caple and starring twenty-eight members of the local community, with Coronation Street’s Pauline Fleming as Paulina, the cast and crew staged an unforgettable show.

It is estimated that more than 1500 people saw the performances in the “fabulous setting” of Birkenhead Park. Free tickets and huge involvement by the local community – in the cast and crew – plus some big names, meant that The Reader Organisation’s aim to make Shakespeare more accessible to people in the wider community has been realised. Councillor Phil Davies, who attended the performance on Friday evening, said,

I’m sure that the fact that tickets were free encouraged people who may never have read or seen a play by Shakespeare to attend. All in all, it was a great night and I very much hope that other plays and performances can be staged in the park in future years.

A mixture of pleasure, pride and surprise was felt amongst the audience, cast and crew: people didn’t expect something that “great and good” in Birkenhead. “This is important, for Birkenhead and for the park,” said one audience member and another commented, “The park’s only used by dog-walkers and scallies. To see it being used like this is wonderful, like reclaiming it for what it should be used for.”

A volunteer on the refreshment stall, a Get Into Reading group member said, “I’m so impressed by what’s been achieved, a wow for the audience and a truly profound, uplifting experience for the Get Into Reading members involved: double success!”

It’s been a remarkable inaugural year for Wirral Community Shakespeare and we hope, due to an overwhelming amount of positive feedback and support received, that The Winter’s Tale is the first of many open-air productions. One cast member commented, “Many of us are asking ourselves, ‘what are we going to do now after such an intense experience? – we all know we’ll be back next year”.

Posted by Jen Tomkins

A community performance in Birkenhead Park of A Winter’s Tale directed by Neil Caple is being produced by The Reader Organisation.

Wirral Community Shakespeare is a project that is running on Wirral with a simple aim, to get anyone involved in producing a great performance of a great play. The project is not simply about putting on a show, it includes workshops, opportunities to volunteer in the build-up to project, to work backstage or front of house on the night.

The show will be on 29th and 30th August in Birkenhead Park. Tickets are FREE and are available to pick up from the Visitors’ Centre, Birkenhead Park 9:30am-4pm. Alternatively send a stamped and addressed envelope to: Get in Reading, The Lauries Centre, 142 Claughton Road, Birkenhead CH61 6EY.

How To Get Involved

Are you interested in being involved? Want to help source props and costumes? Maybe you could host? Or is backstage more your thing? Whatever it is you would like to do, get in touch with Wirral Community Shakespeare using the contact form right here, or email BenDavis [AT] thereader.org.uk

A call from the University’s press office at noon on a Friday is not a particularly usual occurrence. ‘We’re after someone to talk about Shakespeare, just for a few minutes, as part of City Talk’s discussion on making Shakespeare more accessible to younger people – we thought that Jane Davis would be a good person to do this, is she around?’ Ah. No, Jane’s in Paris. Estelle, the coordinator of our Community Shakespeare project is also unavailable. A little more information required now, as I could see that this interview was to be falling upon my shoulders. So I discover that this has all come about after an article published in The Telegraph about Martin Baum’s new publication Yoof Speak.

I feel that yes, Shakespeare, were he alive today, would have felt “duty bound” to reflect “life as it really is in the 21st century” but as far as I can tell, life isn’t all “innit”, “bovvered” and “geezas” in the 21st century. I am not alone in thinking this, am I? Perhaps I live in a bubble where sentences still have words without a littering of zs and vs. Were he alive today I am sure Shakespeare’s language would reflect our current idioms but still be as poetic and beautiful as it was four-hundred years ago. He may well drop a few ts or swear more frequently but really, “innit”? I doubt it. So, in an attempt to defend the richness of the Bard’s language and to reinforce that part of the enjoyment of Shakespeare is in getting to grips with that language, searching for the meaning and feeling like you’ve achieved something, I took to the stage (as it were). Oh okay, if I must… click here to ‘listen again’ (about 45 minutes in).

Now, the problem that I have about this mutation of:

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life;
Whole misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents’ strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love,
And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

to:

Verona was de turf of de feuding Montagues and de Capulet families. And coz they was always brawling and stuff, de prince of Verona told them to cool it or else they was gonna get well mashed if they carried on larging it with each other.

Is that it’s just not Shakespeare is it? I truly believe that Shakespeare can be accessible for all and is, if the time is given to it and texts or performances are approached in a dynamic and interesting way for those who would be otherwise uninterested and un-enthused. Take The Reader Organisation’s Community Shakespeare project: organised by Get Into Reading, we will be staging two performances of The Winter’s Tale in August, reaching out across the Wirral community to members of our GIR groups, local schools and people who, for various reasons feel socially excluded, in the hope that we will be able to make Shakespeare more accessible to the wider community. Members will take part in a wide range of activities to support the event from costume making, ticket design, painting and publicity. It will be hard work, it will take a lot of time, a lot of planning and energy but it will be, we hope, an invigorating, life-enhancing and enjoyable experience for all involved.

Surely it is better to take the time to read, explain and hopefully, eventually, be able to connect with the words of Shakespeare than to alter the language to such a hideous extent that even the story itself loses its essence? Shakespeare is his language. To alter that alters the entire experience.

Posted by Jen Tomkins