We’re excited to share some thoughts from our amazing Associate Artistic Director, Ameera Conrad, featured in a recent chat with London Daily News. Right now, they are on tour across the UK with their bold show, who the f–k is shakespeare?, running from 19th September to 19th October 2024. Check out this conversation to learn more about their journey and the powerful message behind their work!

This is a question I’ve been asked many times – not in so many words, but that’s generally been the vibe. Well, there are many answers, and not all of them clean and satisfying.

The clever answer is that I really do believe that Shakespeare has survived the centuries and is still performed to this day because the stories and characters speak across eras and deal with topics that anyone in any generation will find compelling and be able to connect with.

The other side of that coin is that not everyone has been given the chance to connect with it.

Our education system teaches it in such a way that instils real dread, fear, and boredom in the hearts of young people. The language feels impenetrable gibberish, and most people think of it as something for posh RP Kenneth Branagh types. No shade to Sir Ken, really, love him as Benedict. And don’t read me wrong; this is not because of teachers, it’s because the education system is set up in a way where state educated kids are having arts access stripped from them every year by the government (regardless of whether it’s the Red team or the Blue).

I grew up in South Africa, where English is one of eleven official languages (and not the first language of the majority of the country!) So, to hear this kind of English really might as well be ancient Sumerian! I was very lucky to be able to see Shakespeare every year through the one open air theatre in Cape Town, where they did Shakespeare in so many different accents and dialects that it made the language come alive for me.

I want other people to feel these stories come alive for them too.

Especially people, like me, who feel like Shakespeare isn’t made for them.

There’s a truth in that. It wasn’t made for us. It often still excludes us. That’s why I am adamant that we claim it as our own.

People have gate-kept Shakespeare in the name of Preserving Tradition. Which I think is a boujie way of saying No to anyone who isn’t a privately educated, middle class person. When every Shakespearean scholar worth their salt will tell you is SO the opposite of what Shakespeare’s whole deal was in his own time. He was a social commentator, a bit of a boundary pusher, revolutionary in how his work spoke to the world around him.

Saying that, it doesn’t take away from the fact that some of his work needs to be looked at for what it was; racist, patriarchal, Anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, as well as radical and revolutionary.

Things can be two things.

This is why I wanted to look at 4 of my favourite femme characters; Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth, Viola, and Ophelia. To use their stories as a vehicle to talk about the world today. To give context to when they were written, to acknowledge the difficulties that these characters faced, to celebrate the positive impact that they have had on theatre and popular culture, to hold their narratives up to the light and consider what they mean to me, what they could mean to other people, now.

How can Cleopatra fight against Misogynoir?

How can Lady Macbeth reclaim her identity?

How can Viola celebrate their self-discovery?

How can Ophelia gain some agency?

And how can anyone who comes to see this show see themselves in these stories?

I think it’s important for me to say; I’m everything that the right-wingers tell you to fear. I’m Muslim, I’m African, I’m a Leftie Loonie who wants to take away everything you hold sacred.

But why is Shakespeare sacred?

Why can’t people like me take his writing, which has been so deeply influential to the world around us, and make it our own? If we’re being totally real, Shakespeare himself borrowed and adapted and remade the world around him in his own way – so we’re just doing what he did back then! Respectfully, it’s ours to do with what we want. Who’s going to stop us?

Spoiler alert, the guy’s dead.

I hope you will come and join us on this tour. Whether you love or hate the guy, you have to admit, he’s everywhere! So why not come and see some sick performers flip the script and smash through the paper ceiling!