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Full Female/Gender Non-Conforming Take On MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING to Open at Summer Shakespeare
Don't Miss Summer Shakespeare's 2023 production at Western University.
By: Chloe Rabinowitz Jul. 17, 2023
Summer Shakespeare is Canada's longest-running outdoor Shakespeare event. The first production opened on Aug. 4, 1981. This much-loved summer tradition of watching performances of William Shakespeare's plays in the open-air will return to Western's campus from July 19 to 23 with this year's production of the comedy Much Ado About Nothing.
The play will be performed at the Beryl Ivey Garden behind the University College Building at Western University in London Ontario. Directed by Western graduate Alexandra Rizkallah, the 90-minute show has a full female/gender non-conforming cast.
Rizkallah graduated this June with a double major in theatre studies and biology, the first Western student to combine these areas of study. During her time as an undergraduate student, she was involved in numerous campus productions through Theatre Western, as well as other productions at The Grand Theatre, BLACK SWAN Production Company, various Fringe Festivals, and more.
"Approaching a Shakespeare work can be daunting, but once you bring him to the table as a collaborator you see just how much the text can bend and meld around the story you wish it to tell," Rizkallah said.
"Working on Much Ado has been a rewarding experience which has culminated much of my past work and what I have learned from the great directors and mentors I have had the pleasure to work with."
"To me, the clear route was to cast these incredibly talented artists and to not cast the genders as written but to rather have bodies play the characters as written. It's been one of the best choices thus far and I am very proud of the work that we are doing to challenge the idea of 'who owns Shakespeare?'"
Rizkallah's science background has also informed her theatre practice in numerous ways. Learning about how the body moves and reacts to situations is crucial when directing actors, and having some psychological and medical acumen to draw upon has been helpful for Rizkallah in staging shows.
"Directing women and non-binary people to play male characters has been an exciting challenge which required a lot of prep work in gender psychology and body language," Rizkallah said.
"Women and femme presenting individuals sometimes de-voice at the end of sentences or speeches and take up less space physically when sitting or entering a room, so throughout the rehearsal process I had the cast take part in different workshops and exercise to inhabit a new type of body that was unafraid of taking up space both vocally and physically."
$10 Tickets for this year's production are available at the link below.
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