In a world where our attention spans are only getting shorter and ’15 minutes of fame’ is starting to sound like an eternity, one person has managed to stay relevant for more than FOUR HUNDRED YEARS: Shakespeare. We’re forever fans after falling in love with Leonardo DiCaprio’s Romeo in Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 Romeo + Juliet (yes, it’s true that the first time you fall in love is the hardest), where we cut out pictures and movie stills and then clear durasealed our social studies books so we could carry him and the film everywhere. Now, a fast-paced new take on the classic is coming this month to Auckland which has got us thinking… particularly in NZ, how is Shakespeare still so relevant?
Bedroom, excitement, lonely, invitation, eyeball, generous, hurry, manager, fashionable, satisfying, gloomy, frugal, accommodation, alligator, useful…
What do all these words have in common?
What about these phrases: ‘Break the ice’, ‘in a pickle’, ‘green-eyed monster’, ‘wild-goose chase’, ‘heart of gold’ and ‘wear your heart on your sleeve’?
If you guessed Shakespeare, you’re on the money.
Yip, they’re just a few of the 1,700ish (YES THAT MANY) words that William Shakespeare invented that are still used today.
If you’re a millennial, chances are Shakespeare has a special place in your heart thanks to the 1996 Baz Luhrmann MASTERPIECE that was Romeo + Juliet. (Personally, I saw it THREE times at the movie theatre – thankfully those were the days when it was just $5 a pop to see it – and just about wore out my CD of the soundtrack. That fish tank scene will live on in my brain for eternity. It’s a film Emma and I still talk about waaaay too much – she was 11 when it came out and wrote this beautiful story taking a walk down memory lane about it for the 25th anniversary. Swoon!).
This month, the Auckland Theatre Company is bringing the story again to life once more – director Benjiman Kilby-Henson is presenting it as a fast-paced thriller set in 1960’s Milan (and it’s looking and sounding HOT).
It’s starring Phoebe McKellar (of One Lane Bridge fame) as Juliet – as well as Miriama McDowell as Whaea (Friar) Lawrence.
For many of us (for whom that movie is our own Roman Empire) it means Shakespeare will always be relevant. But, it is more than FOUR HUNDRED YEARS since Shakespeare first debuted the play… So, what the heck makes this story, and Shakespeare so relevant and timeless?
Two of the stars of the ATC production have some thoughts – here, Phoebe writes about the fact that iPhones thankfully can’t replace raw emotions, while Miriama writes from the heart about her own complicated feelings about Shakespeare as a wahine Māori…
Miriama McDowell – Whaea Lawrence
My attitude towards Shakespeare is complex. I’m a wahine Māori who graduated from Toi Whakaari NZ Drama School in the early 2000’s when great Māori playwrights like Briar Grace Smith, Hone Kouka and Mitch Tawhi Thomas were blazing a trail of work, and New Zealand theatre companies were starting to programme NZ stories and moving away from the classics. Lucky me.
I’ve always worked with practitioners who are actively seeking to decolonise theatre, one of my favourite career moments is when the cast of Upu looked at how we could decolonise our bow at the end of the show- moving away from a “ballet curtsey” and towards the movements of Te Moana Nui a Kiwa.
I learnt my craft connecting to the stories of my ancestors, moving between comedy, tragedy, betrayal, loss, grief, love and shame within one play. Because that is the scope that Māori stories reach for– connected to earth and sky and past and future all at once.
Sound familiar?
Shakespeare is the same. The themes are epic – love, shame, hope, loss, rage, revenge, heaven, hell- there’s no subtext in Shakespeare, the characters speak exactly what they think and feel, and what they feel is … well it’s extra. Shakespeare’s like gymnastics for the brain -it’s asking you as the performer, to unravel complex ideas in a language that we all just barely understand, but also instinctually know, and bring the audience along with you, it’s asking you to use metaphor to carry the story, and like Te Reo Māori, it uses rhythm, tone, humour, alliteration and vowel sounds to connect the audience not only a-hinengaro– through their intellect- but a-wairua– through their intuition and emotions.
Is it still relevant? Well my 7 year old Hero (named after a character in Much Ado About Nothing) can answer that. She is fascinated by Shakespeare as a language “But what is that you are speaking? And where does that language come from? And was that language invented when you were a kid?” “Ummmmm, no, that would make me four hundred years old” She shrugs, as if that’s not far off the mark. I tell her how Shakespeare invented words all the time, especially insults, and how our tupuna did the same when they arrived in Aotearoa , giving new things names that reflected how they felt or tasted or looked, or naming things for what reminded them of home. Hero rides through the streets, trying out the words in her mouth “Rouse thee, man!” she says to the ducks in her path.
For me, Shakespeare is relevant because it is a celebration of language, and a celebration of the universality of the human experience. When I come back to Auckland Theatre Company at the end of the year to perform Tiri in both Te Reo Māori and English in Witi Ihimaera’s Tiri Te Araroa Woman Far Walking, I’ll be drawing on the lessons Whaea Lawrence has taught me in Verona, and vice versa – I bring my tupuna with me onto the stage every night I perform in Romeo and Juliet.
Phoebe McKeller – Juliet
Just like any great song that survives the test of time—classics are classics for a reason—they resonate with the emotions and experiences we all share as humans on this planet. While a great deal of Shakespearean language isn’t part of our everyday vocabulary anymore, and some of the words may feel archaic or foreign, his writing is so rich in imagery and metaphor that itis more alike in quality to the poeticism found in songwriting more than it does in modern prose.
There’s a lyrical rhythm to his plays that taps into something primal and emotional, much like a great ballad does.
Just as how Etta James’ At Last can stir the excitement and hopefulness of new love, Romeo and Juliet does so too with its star-crossed passion. Or how Dolly Parton’s Jolene captures the aching jealousy and desperation that echoes the emotional journey of Othello. These songs, like Shakespeare’s works, endure because they delve into the universal themes that continue to define the human experience—grief, love, jealousy, greed, longing, and hope.
What keeps Shakespeare relevant in the modern day is not the setting or the style, but his deep understanding of what it means to be human. And while our daily lives may look very different from when ol willy Shakespeare was writing four hundred years ago, cars and iPhones haven’t altered the raw emotion we feel when we fall in love for the first time, lose someone we care about, or face betrayal. His words remind us that though centuries have passed, we’re still made of the same stuff—heart, hope, and hurt.
