Performance
This short performance is a joyful bubbling brook of a rom-com with a warning sign that malice, power games and social critique lurk beneath the surface. Is love a virus or a cure? In a world
of deceptions and masks, the lines between romance, violence, desire, and revenge blur. Do we celebrate existing notions of love or deconstruct them and strike courtship down? Can we do both? What is the role of leaders and their relationship to compassion, equality, and justice? Are they the source of our ‘bum jokes’ or elected to maintain the status quo?
Workshop
Where the performance blends light and dark interpretations, our workshop investigates how the text supports more ex- treme readings. One could read Don Pedro and John as harm- less tinkering jesters or powerful men quick to exact violence if their whims are not met. Could Hero and Claudio be pure and innocent lovers or representations of the transactional transfer of possessions and influence? And are Beatrice and Benedick potentially gullible egos influenced by pandering and conflict, or brilliant minds, burning in loneliness that realise they need not be alone?
“I do spy some marks of love in her.”