This August Bank Holiday, 60 Hour Shakespeare invites audiences through the looking-glass, to this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, where the Plantagenet King, Richard II, sits upon the ground and asks this sceptre’d isle to yield stinging nettles to his enemies.
The King has returned from Ireland to find the formerly banished Henry Bolingbroke has an ally, the Duke of York, in his rebellion against the crown. The King had seized Bolingbroke’s inheritance to fund the Irish war and is deposed and imprisoned in Pomfret Castle, but a plot is hatched to restore him to the throne.
60 Hour Shakespeare will be streaming live from six different time zones around the world. Richard II is set in 1399 and the production design moves away from the virtual backgrounds of Zoom to a different way of staging an online performance using candlelight and costume to create a cinematic effect.
Richard II is a history play and a tragedy, characterised by the psychological drama surrounding the deposition of King Richard II, who became King at the age of 10, and died in mysterious circumstances.
60 Hour Shakespeare’s mild inspiration is the rehearsal time available to actors in Shakespeare’s time. Acting companies might have had only one rehearsal before a performance and performed as many as 40 productions a year. Our company performs with professional and amateur actors from around the world, who are cast from open auditions, to raise money for charity. Previous productions include A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 2020, Hamlet in 2019, and Much Ado About Nothing in 2018, which raised over £3000 for No5 Young People, Macmillan Cancer Research, and British Heart Foundation respectively.
The performance is free to attend, and stream details will be sent prior to the show via email. Click here to register for tickets and if you are able to make a donation please do so here.
