April is not the cruellest month in South Africa - after all, it is full of public holidays! Although perhaps some Shakespeare ZA readers (teachers marking at home? actors missing their audiences?) would agree with TS Eliot ...
Either way, April brings a happy annual event: the Shakespeare Birthday Lecture, hosted by the Makhanda Branch of the Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa. The 2023 lecture will be delivered by Marguerite de Waal.
And this year, the month of April brings more good news: Buhle Ngaba’s popular “Shakespeare Grounded” programme has been relaunched!
The 2023 Shakespeare Birthday Lecture will take place at Amazwi Museum of South African Literature in Makhanda on Tuesday 11 April at 18:00.
Dr Marguerite de Waal (University of Pretoria) will deliver the lecture on the topic:
“‘I knew her, Horatio’: Performing Legacies in Hamlet 2021”.
Update (6 June 2023):
De Waal’s lecture can now be viewed on the #lockdownshakespeare YouTube channel
(Photographer: Marguerite van Eeden)
AND Shakespeare ZA is glad to share some news from Buhle Ngaba, who played Ophelia in (and was also associate director of) Neil Coppen’s “live-online-reading” of Hamlet in 2021. Buhle writes:
“Friends, South Africans and countrymen! I’ve recently returned from completing an arts residency in Basel, Switzerland, which included facilitating narrative workshops at schools. I’m back in Cape Town and offering my Shakespeare Grounded workshops (previously received with much enthusiasm at the Shakespeare Schools Festival, Vienna Festival, AFDA and the University of Cape Town). Please get in touch if you would like Shakespeare Grounded at your school!”
These workshops adopt a practical approach to making Shakespeare’s plays accessible to young South Africans. Students are guided through:
a basic (re)introduction to Shakespeare
narrative building and world making
adaptations, alternative forms and structure.