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much ado about nothing
design role: Set and Costume designer, Scenic Artist director: John Hartoch company: RSC Complete works festival, BOVTS entry. venue: The Swan Theatre, Stratford upon Avon, and touring. date: 2006
John Hartoch’s light-hearted interpretation of this much loved Shakespeare play toured as an educational project before opening at the Swan; the actors provided workshops in schools to tie in with curricular study of Shakepeare. The set was a minimal backdrop cloth, designed as part parchment manuscript, part dictionary page, a comment on the play’s prominent wordplay and shifting meanings. The drop crumpled away, insubstantial, at the end of the evening; actors entered and exited through a central split, literally parting definition; words were integral as a material part of the show as well as a spoken one, highlighting to young audiences a relationship between the text and the performed work.
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