UWaterloo Drama presents R3 (Richard III by Shakespeare)
Adapted by Toby Malone | Directed by Jennifer Roberts-Smith
Re-imagined into our modern, media-driven world, the uWaterloo Drama production of Shakespeare's Richard III presents a fresh take on the nature of power and manner in which public discourse is deployed, distorted, and manipulated in our highly mediated society.
Richard III remains the world’s most popular history play, a reputation only heightened by the recent discovery of the historical king’s bones under an English parking lot. Richard’s relentless rise to power shows that tyranny relies as much on mass-acceptance as force or manipulation, and sometimes that trajectory can be slowed by the simplest acts of resistance.
Aided by faculty, staff, alumnus and student designers, Bill Chesney (Set/props), Sharon E. Secord (costumes), Tallen Kay (video) and Hilary Pitman (lighting), director Jennifer Roberts-Smith creates a modern world where social media, real life, and high-definition staged broadcasts vie for the audience’s attention. Set in a mediated observatory that gives Richard the power to see and be seen, this new adaptation asks what the history of the maligned English monarch can tell us about ourselves. Is tyranny any more visible to us in the hyper mediated age of the Internet than it was in Shakespeare's time? How can we know it when we see it? And when and how should we oppose it?
What does it mean to perform history?
Alumni Night November, 12 - by invitation only
High School Matinee, November 14 - seminar 10:00, performance 12:15
$12 seminar + performance, $10 performance only, supervisors free