‘The Taming of The Shrew’: a wonderful, relevant play for our society. But when performed by a cast of all-girls from Burtnwood School, it really does show that girls cannot be tamed.
In the summer of 2017, Year 8 and 9 students auditioned for parts in the Shakespeare Schools Festival. Only a lucky handful of girls were picked. The play they would soon begin rehearsals for: ‘The Taming of The Shrew’, a sexist, misogynistic play written in 1593. Ironic, isn’t it? A group of young girls playing men (and women) in a Shakespeare play, in the twenty first century? I guess we have come a long way since the Renaissance, or have we? Watching the play, we are compelled to ask, are women still suffering from domestic abuse? Are women paid the same as men? Are we still fighting against the media’s representation of beauty? If the answer to all of these is ‘no’ then we really haven’t come so far after all. Perhaps it isn’t a coincidence these students performed this play. Perhaps this is why the play is so relevant today. Perhaps the focus on domestic abuse, sexism in the work place and inequality is still a battle women haven’t won.
Undoubtedly, the best part of the whole production was the staging and acting which used a Brechtian, minimalist approach. Cardboard boxes were used to represent tables, chairs and prisons all of which enabled the actors to present us with powerful metaphors of struggle, power and conflict. All this took a lot of time and effort as we gathered from Antonia Edgington’s (my sister and Petruchio) exclamation “I’m tired!” after the play. But as the Bard once said, “To climb hills requires a slow pace at first”.
After a long journey of discovery with the director, Ms Lalovic, this all-girl show was finally shared with us. At 19:00 on the 18th October, Shakespearian lyrics bounced off the walls of the New Wimbledon Theatre as we all watched, with bated breath, young talent perform: ‘Romeo and Juliet’, ‘Macbeth’, ‘The Tempest’ and ‘The Taming of The Shrew’. Walking out the theatre that night, I was touched to see all of the schools, in particular my school, in this meaningful performance; I hope other people were too. Having no bias opinion, (of course) ‘The Taming of The Shrew’ was by far the best of them all.
By Emilia Edgington, Burntwood School
