Debra Ann Byrd, founder of the Harlem Shakespeare festival, is speaking at an in-conversation event titled My Black Girl’s Journey, companion piece to Becoming Othello, her “living memoir” solo show: “A black friend asked me: ‘Why are you only doing Shakespeare?’” Byrd’s path to the playwright was set after a theatrical agent told her that the colour of her skin would bar her from playing classical roles. Her friend’s question led her to the conclusion: “Shakespeare is my vehicle. He makes a door open in a way not possible unless we have this one thing in common.”
At the sixth York International Shakespeare festival, people from the UK, EU, US, India, Turkey, Japan, Ukraine and beyond share “this one thing in common”. Over 10 days and nights, multinational audiences and artists crisscross barriers, visible and invisible, via performances, exhibitions, concerts, workshops and seminars.
Discussions and workshops are core features of the festival. Dr Varsha Panjwani, leading a symposium on Shakespeare and Identity, shared perceptions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream from the point of view of someone growing up in Mumbai, focusing on the story around the “Indian boy” and what it might tell us about western colonialism. Daria Furmanova described learning lines in Elizabethan English for the festival’s performance-creation project, Working Title. This was developed over a week, around a selection of Shakespeare texts by a scratch company made up of visiting members of Ukraine’s Ivano-Frankivsk Theatre, alongside actors, students and members of the York Ukrainian Society. Around the walls of the main foyer, the exhibition Shakespeare and Manga presented a dynamic, frame-busting visualisation of the plays in the style of Japanese pop-culture graphics. The accompanying talk and practical workshop with artists and experts, including Inko Ai Takita and Yukari Yoshihara, involved participants in their creative processes.
Among a number of international premieres scheduled by festival director Philip Parr, one that stood out was Macbeth: An Attempt to Adapt to our Political Landscape. Written by Turkish journalist, writer and film-maker Ümit Kıvanç in 1991, it transforms Shakespeare’s text into a darkly humorous political satire (English translation by Ulaş Özgün). Directed by Filiz Ozcan (joint artistic director of the UK-based Komola Collective) as a staged reading, the pared-down, recontextualised story is crisply delivered by a local cast. Stage directions, read aloud, inform us that the action opens “in a capital city; a crowded bar”. In Kıvanç’s version, Duncan’s is a political “death”, his career destroyed by the ambitious Macbeths, who entrap him in a sex scandal. Initially, the media/witches assist the scheming couple, but soon abandon them in favour of the usurping General Hecate, who consigns the political elite to a giant cauldron. Kıvanç’s scenario all too accurately reflects political landscapes today. I’d be interested to see a full production.
The festival’s headline act was globe-trotting Footsbarn Travelling Theatre. Formed in Cornwall more than 50 years ago, the company relocated its base to France in the early 1990s and was last seen in the UK 15 years ago. Sadie Jemmett, artistic director since 2021 (she is also a composer and musician), presented Twelfth Night as if in a circus ring, being delivered by a troupe of travelling players, but this like a pale echo of the company’s past ethos, reduced to an aesthetic. Some scenes seemed still stuck in the rehearsal room; others, though, soared: Gavin Stewart’s Malvolio, puffing himself up with self-importance, reading the spoof letter encouraging him to make advances to his employer, Olivia (Lujza Richter), while his tormentors play laugh-aloud hide-and-seek games as they watch him swallow their bait.
Members of the nine-strong cast offered flashes of insight into characters and relationships, but only Sophie Doyle’s Viola/Cessario felt fully formed (the real-life resemblance between her and Ethan Piercy, who plays her twin, Sebastian, beautifully exploited, was a treat). Jemmett’s Elizabethan/folk/Dylan-style music, performed alongside the stage with fellow musician, Maz McNamara, was terrific. The pair’s attention to the actors, highlighting or underscoring their interactions and emotions, was acute and sensitive – exemplary accompaniment.
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On the (relatively new) campus of sponsor, York St John University in the shadow of the city’s Roman/medieval walls, this festival opens doors on to the one thing we all have in common across time and space – our humanity.