In Search of Shakespeare: the Contributors

Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

Maya Vision at the Birthplace and other Shakespeare Birthplace Trust locations:

Working with the In Search of Shakespeare team was great fun and always interesting. During filming I looked forward to receiving emails from the Maya Vision office to find out what they needed next!

One of my abiding memories of working with the Maya Vision team will probably being on 'snow watch' and stumbling out of bed early in the morning to contact Peter the cameraman, on seeing a rare sight - the first flakes of snow in Stratford! By the time he made it up to Stratford to film Shakespeare's Birthplace in the snow, I think the last vestiges had melted.

Hathaway Cottage

The seasons did present another little problem. One of the fascinating challenges presented by David (David Wallace the director) was for me to produce a bouquet of the sort of flowers Anne Hathaway would have carried when she married William in the November of 1582. Even today the choice of English flowers available in November is rather limited to those grown under glass, but to source Tudor winter flowers in late summer was an interesting exercise!

Filming in a Grade I* listed building is not without its drawbacks, and one of them is not being able to risk having real fires in the hearths. However a combination of our fibre optic fake 'fires', David's flambeau (a strip of coloured silk with a fan underneath it) and artificial smoke made a surprisingly effective substitute.

Another occupational hazard of filming in the Shakespeare houses with their very sensitive fire detection sensors, is the risk of being suddenly being interrupted by the fire brigade. Filming In Search of Shakespeare at Mary Arden's House was no exception when several burley firemen suddenly barged onto the set!

Michael was always generous with offers of help - from assisting with the erection of scaffolding outside of the Birthplace to volunteering to help us out with furniture re-arranging at Anne Hathaway's Cottage. It was a pleasure to watch his wonderful professionalism, to see him honing his final script and then delivering it shortly afterwards with such ease and enthusiasm.

Anne Donnelly, Curator
www.shakespeare.org.uk

the Royal Shakespeare Company

Gregory Doran on stage at the New Inn

"The prospect of working with Michael and the Mayavision team was an exciting one for the RSC. Using a contemporary group of actors under the direction of RSC Assoicate Director Gregory Doran rather than resorting to reconstruction really played to our strengths as a Company. Yet crucially for us, the process was a collaborative one - and we think it shows. A great series - but terrific fun to work on as well."

Roger Mortlock Director of Public Affairs
www.rsc.org.uk

Shakespeare at Wilton

Michael Wood at Wilton House

"Lights, cameras, action" We're used to film companies at Wilton House but on a balmy summer's evening we soon forgot about the camera and the lights. We watched Michael Wood walk quietly round the courtyard where, four hundred years before, Shakespeare had performed 'As you like it' and 'Twelfth Night.' We appreciated Maya Vision's sympathetic filming at Wilton House where Shakespeare had been invited by the remarkable Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, to entertain James the First. It was here too at Wilton House that Shakespeare met Mary Sidney's son, William Herbert the young nobleman he adored.

www.wiltonhouse.co.uk

Tower of London

The Tower of London

"Working for playhouses in Shoreditch, Southwark and Blackfriars and living in Bishopsgate, Shakespeare spent his time in London in the shadow of the Tower of London, by then infamous as a fortress, prison for high-ranking citizens and place of sudden death. Shakespeare exploited this dramatic potential to the full, drawing on and adapting a wealth of sources to create his prolific output. The Tower's ominous presence can be detected in the background of many of his plays, but none more so than Richard III, which still informs the murder of the Little Princes in the Tower to this day."

HM Tower of London
www.hrp.org.uk

Beaulieu

Michael Wood at Beaulieu

The link between the 3rd Earl of Southampton, ancestor of the present Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, and Shakespeare, is one aspect of the family history that is less well know to the public visiting Beaulieu. It is now widely acknowledged that the 3rd Earl was Shakespeare's patron and indeed, the person to whom Shakespeare wrote many of his sonnets. We were therefore delighted to be approached by Mayavision for inclusion in this excellent series and to have the 'delicious' Michael Wood come to Beaulieu. Filming took place in Palace House, Lord Montagu's family home and in Beaulieu Abbey Church, both very historic buildings which date back to their 13th century Cistercian Abbey origins and the perfect backdrop for Michael's excellent storytelling.

www.beaulieu.co.uk

Dulwich Picture Gallery

Filming was difficult. The picture store where these portraits are usually kept was chocabloc...I had to insist that only Michael and I and the cameraman were inside, and the latter was forbidden to make any movement WHATSOEVER. Michael's enthusiasm - and gestures - were highly infectious, and I was convinced that either he or I would punch a hole in one of the portraits. Fortunately, during the run of our exhibition Shakespeare in Art, from 16th July to 19th October, all the portraits we looked at will be on display in the gallery - so the public will have no such problems."

The exhibition, Shakespeare in Art, runs from 16 July - 19 October at Dulwich Picture Gallery, Gallery Road, Dulwich Village, London SE21 7AD.
Tel 0208 693 5254.

Ian Dejardin, curator of Dulwich Picture Gallery in South London

www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk

King Edward VI School Stratford-upon-Avon

Over the last 18 months KES has been closely involved with this major project. In September 2001 a group of boys aged 12 to 14 performed extracts from the Tudor Interlude Ralph Roister Doister (one of the first school plays!) The historian Michael Wood wanted to explore what it is like for a group of school actors to engage with a text that Shakespeare himself would certainly have known, and could even have taken part in, whilst at school. Indeed, he could even have performed in the same room! The scenes were played before an invited audience in Big School, and the enjoyment of all was palpable. The next evening we returned to perform scenes from Seneca's Hecuba (in a 1572 translation!) This time we were encouraged to examine the challenges and opportunities offered when female characters are played by young boys.

In December the crew returned to film several boys in the early morning, "creeping like snail unwillingly to school." Not an onerous task, and one requiring little in the way of acting skills... The success of the earlier filming resulted in another invitation, and in November 2002 a group of seven boys from the school (aged 11 and 12) performed several extracts from Poetaster by Ben Jonson. The scenes were filmed in The Swan Theatre (RSC) and will help to illustrate the 'Theatre Wars' and the popularity of Boys' Companies at the beginning of the seventeenth century. This has been a wonderful adventure for us all. The boys and staff will always appreciate the professional, patient and good humoured treatment we received from everyone at MayaVision. Can we do it again, please?

Perry Mills, Head of English

National Monuments Record

Congratulations to Michael Wood and Maya Vision International on the excellent series In Search of Shakespeare. Michael Wood takes us on a journey that really brings the past to life, it engages us and makes the past seem relevant to our modern lives.

Photographs are important source of documentary evidence that help us understand and visualise the past. This series makes clever use of Victorian photography to help take us back in time to buildings that Shakespeare would have known in his day. Although many of these buildings have now been demolished they have been preserved for a modern audience in photographic form. The National Monuments Record has a wonderful photographic collection that documents England from the beginnings of photography right up until the modern day. We were delighted to be able to help with this series by contributing early photographic images of the City of London.

National Monuments Record The NMR holds 10 million items on the architecture and archaeology of England. For information on our architectural records outside Greater London and our archaeological records for the whole of England please contact the National Monuments Record Centre in Swindon: E-mail nmrinfo@english-heritage.org.uk

National Monuments Record
www.english-heritage.org.uk/nmr

Chapterhouse

For a company that specialises in national touring productions of Shakespearean plays it was a great irony that we became involved in the programme through performing our only non-Shakespearean venture to date!

'The Mystery Plays - The Ancient Cornish Drama' was performed in the summer of 2001. Director Karen Crow's adaptation of a 19th century translation was the first ever professional production of the plays. Indeed 'The Smiths Play' which was featured in In Search of Shakespeare is unique to the Cornish Cycle and had not been 'professionally' performed since the 17th century.

It is also ironic that Mystery Cycles fell out of fashion both theatrically and 'politically' during Shakespeares's boyhood and indeed he would have been part of the last generation to see them performed in the traditional manner. Their passing must have left a vacuum of public performance. Luckily he came along to fill it!

The evening that Mayavision spent with us at Lincoln Castle was very exciting. As a traveling, live theatre company we rarely get the opportunity to record, with any real quality, the performances each night so to have the cameras at our 'home gig' was an added focus and spur. We also shot some scenes in the streets of Lincoln at night which were great fun to do despite the bemused looks on the faces of the pub crowds upon discovering us in full costume, pushing a cart up Lincoln's famous 'Steep Hill' at closing time!

In the documentary, Michael makes the point that the young Shakespeare would have witnessed public executions in the streets which would certainly have told in his writings. There is little doubt that witnessing the sight of a real man being nailed to a cross, hearing the sound of the nails as they pierce his flesh, seeing the sweat and blood run from his face and his muscles strain to maintain an upright position must also have played their part on the psyche of the young bard just as it moves today the heart of even the most staunch atheist. It is a representation of simple human suffering which we see reverberate time and time again throughout Shakespeare's work.

Chapterhouse Theatre Company perform extensive national tours of Shakespearean plays. Outdoor performances take place in over 100 heritage venues and gardens throughout the summer months. This autumn sees the company venture 'indoors' with a national theatre tour of Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream. The company performs with fifteen actors and beautiful period costumes. Their productions also feature original music scores specially composed by the Producer, Richard Main. See www.chapterhouse.org for more details, dates and venues.

Karen Crow
Director
Chapterhouse Theatre Company
www.chapterhouse.org

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