Educasions' Romeo and Juliet

The Cape Town-based Educasions Theatre Company takes setwork plays into schools to support curriculum delivery and provide theatre access for all students. Shakespeare ZA presents a sneak peek into the new Educasions production of Romeo and Juliet, premiering on 3 February.

Click through the slideshow below to see more! You can email Educasions’ Lauren Bates to book a performance for your school.

A new digital home for the Decentred Shakespeares Network

The Decentred Shakespeares Network was created in 2021 with the aim of disrupting “ways of making, teaching and thinking about Shakespeare practice in the contemporary performing arts industry and the field of Shakespeare studies”. Over the past four years, this exciting collaboration has been “enabling, championing and spotlighting the process and creations of global artists and scholars” engaging with Shakespeare.

The Network’s mission statement describes three core pillars of digital performance practice:

  • Site and its layers of colonial, cultural and immediate history

  • People in the Site working with Shakespeare as a means to explore their identity

  • The Languages used by the People within the Site

Through performances, research publications and the creation of educational materials, the Decentred Shakespeares Network “serves to update the making and teaching of Shakespeare’s work in a way which speaks to the global values, technological capabilities and ethical focus of twenty-first century performance making”.

Now the Network has launched a new website to showcase its work and give shape to its future projects.

The Network includes artists and academics from India (BraveSpaces Creative India), Brazil (Cena IV Shakespeare Cia), Ghana (Act for Change) and Scotland (the University of the West of Scotland).

Visitors browsing the site will see, in its Timeline of the Network’s growth and development, some South African roots! Henry Bell of UWS reviewed the Shakespeare ZA initiative #lockdownshakespeare for Shakespeare Bulletin – he had used the #lockdownshakespeare videos as a digital resource in his teaching during the Covid-19 pandemic, reflecting with students on how the project showcased locations, accents and languages through self-taping and site choice.

This led to the 2021 online event Lockdown Shakespeare: Transnational Explorations, co-hosted by the Tsikinya-Chaka Centre at Wits University and the Creative Media Academy at the University of the West of Scotland, at which an international mix of scholars and artists shared ideas about site-based Shakespeares and digital practice. Enter creative producer Ben Crystal, who approached Bell and his UWS colleague Steve Collins “to establish a network that could share methods and practice with each other”.

Artists from Act for Change, BraveSpaces Creative India and Cena IV Shakespeare Cia were invited to film short extracts from Othello, Romeo and Juliet and Measure For Measure in Accra, Mumbai and Sao Paolo respectively, placing an emphasis on the processes behind these digital creations. “A nascent method was formed out of a decentred collaborative approach”, driven by the practice of performing artists from the global south: “This methodology was then applied to teaching at UWS that saw films created by BA Performance students in Scottish English inspired by the work created in Brazil, Ghana and India.” 

In 2022, this model was put to the test in the experimental production Pericles on the Seas, which took scenes from Pericles to develop new and innovative approaches to the text. In 2023, Bell and Collins travelled to South Africa to present at the Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa’s twelfth triennial congress, “Shakespeare Towards an End” (see also Shakespeare in Southern Africa volume 37). And at this year’s British Shakespeare Association (BSA) conference, representatives of the Network participated in a hybrid panel discussion on digitally-connected, site-based practice. Their video presentations, filmed on beaches and seafronts in Ghana, South Africa and Scotland, explored these “littoral zones” as sites for “linguistic and cultural resistance” via Shakespeare.

So what’s next for the Decentred Shakespeares Network? There will be more presentations on what is already a rich academic and artistic collaboration at the World Shakespeare Congress in Verona in 2026. And beyond that: watch this space.

Workshops for Cape Town teachers at MEMOs in December

The countdown has begun to the New Encounters conference from 11-14 December, convened by Dr. Hassana Moosa of the Medieval and Early Modern Orients (MEMOs) collective, and co-hosted by the Department of English Literary Studies at the University of Cape Town and the Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa. Along with a full programme of talks, panels and a series of other events, the conference will include two exciting workshops aimed at high school educators.

On Saturday 13 December, there will be a fabulous interactive session with Lauren Bates from Educasions, demonstrating the mixed reality video game Play the Knave as a fun tool that enriches learners’ understanding of Shakespeare through performance.

Venue: Arts Block, UCT upper campus

Time: 10:00-12:00

On Sunday 14 December, an informal ‘Breakfast and Brainstorm’ session will introduce teachers to new resources that can support the teaching of Shakespeare in South African schools, with an emphasis on inclusive histories.

Venue: Islamia College (Imam Haron Road, Lansdowne)

Time: 10:00-12:30

 

In addition, each session of the New Encounters conference will be of interest to anyone curious to explore global history before and during the ‘Renaissance’. More information and the full programme are available here.

The events are free, but registration is essential for catering purposes.

Cast announced for Twelfth Night (Maynardville 2026)

In February and March next year, the Maynardville Open-Air Festival in Cape Town will feature Twelfth Night directed by Steven Stead. It has been billed as “an al fresco production, set to a sultry jazz soundtrack that echoes the sophisticated sounds of 1960s Rome ... couture costumes, Sofia Loren-style, infused with the decadent glamour of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita”.

Now the production’s cast has been revealed:

“When Viola (Emily Child) washes ashore and disguises herself as a man, she quickly finds herself entangled in the affections of the lovesick Orsino (Jock Kleynhans) and the formidable Olivia (Jenny Stead). Add to this mix the pompous Malvolio (Graham Hopkins), the quick-witted clown Feste (David Viviers), and a pair of drunken schemers, Sir Toby Belch (Michael Richard) and Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Aidan Scott), and you have all the ingredients for Shakespeare’s most deliciously chaotic comedy.”

Other cast members are: Natasha Sutherland (Maria), Ntlanhla Morgan Kutu (Antonio), William Young (Sebastian), Lungile Lallie (Fabian/Valentine) and Paul Savage (Sea Captain).

Set design: Greg King

Costume design: Maritha Visagie

Composer / Music director: Wessel Odendaal

Lighting design: Oliver Hauser

Sound design: David Klaasen

Book tickets via Quicket!

Call for Papers: "Journeys – Borders – Encounters" (SASMARS 2026)

The Southern African Society for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (SASMARS) is pleased to announce that the 27th Biennial International SASMARS Conference will be held from 3 to 6 September 2026 at the Mont Fleur Conference Venue in Stellenbosch. Papers for this interdisciplinary conference may cover any period within the Middle Ages and Renaissance, in any geographical space, and deal with any area of interest or discipline that could be relevant to the topic “Journeys – Borders – Encounters”.

Ideas to consider could include, but need not be limited to:

  • Travel and migration

  • Spiritual journeys and pilgrimage

  • Trade routes, trade, and trade goods

  • Encounters between cultures, peoples, religions, and the like

  • Physical or metaphorical boundaries

  • Maps and map-making

  • Environments and ecology

  • Medicine and medical knowledge exchange

  • Intellectual and textual encounters and exchanges

  • War and campaigning

Proposals should consist of a title and abstract of up to 250 words, as well as the author’s name, affiliation, contact details, and a brief biography of no more than 100 words. Papers should be no longer than 20 minutes when read (approximately 2 500 words) and will be followed by Q & A.

Please submit proposals by email to Carin Marais by 31 December 2025.

The keynote speaker for the 2026 conference will be Professor Jordi Sánchez-Martí of the University of Alicante, Spain.

Sánchez-Martí is a professor in English Literature and a Partner Principal Investigator on Re-mediating the Early Book: Pasts and Futures (REBPAF). He has a particular interest in Middle English romances and their transmission, as well as Iberian books of chivalry in English translation and their circulation. He has received an H.P. Kraus Fellowship from the Beinecke Library (Yale), a Katharine F. Pantzer Fellowship in Descriptive Bibliography from Houghton Library (Harvard), and a Philip A. Knachel Fellowship from the Folger Shakespeare Library. He has been a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institut für Buchwissenschaft, Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg and a Visiting College Research Associate at Wolfson College (Cambridge).