The following essay was written for my GCSE English course in February 2001 and relates to the William Shakespeare play “The Merchant of Venice”. It’s released here under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales Licence. I can’t vouch for it’s completeness: the only copy of the essay I have includes “PASTE HERE!” after the 4th paragraph and a section in red towards the end. I am also unsure of the title or question of the piece as this is also not in the document. I hope it will still be of some use to someone!
William Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice’ addresses some very important points in term of religious and social views. The play centers around the idea of antisemitism in society and the way the Jewish community has been, and to some extent still is, persecuted for their religion. Due to this the play is of a controversial nature and so one which it is hard to put on in today’s multi religious society. The objections raised today are mainly about Act Four, Scene One – the court room scene. [read more]
So I’m heading back from another Grim North production, ‘Anaesthesia’. This year’s production was earlier than normal, sparking suspicion that there might be another before the end of the year. I’ll wait and see.
The production came together really well this year for me, with the biggest bonus being the time we were able to get into the theatre. It’s the third time we have used the Hebden Bridge Little Theatre and clearly they are starting to trust us more than previous years. In the past we have had to arrange with them to be there to let us in each time we needed to be in the theatre, and to stay until we had finished so that they could lock up again afterwards. This proved a real restriction on the time we had to do our get in.
For me this is of course a real problem – it takes time to rig and focus the lights, as well to work out a dimmer patch and do any programming I wanted to do. In fact, in previous years, I haven’t had time to do much programming at all – I’d just run the show of some hastily put together scenes on submasters and busked through each night. This year I was able to do much more and the difference was noticeable.
I’m currently on a train heading towards Leeds. We just left Retford. I’m going to stay with my parents for a couple of weeks, for a number of reasons. Firstly next weekend sees the first Grim North’s productions for this year, ‘Stranded’, and I hear on the grapevine that there will be more than one this year, possibly some kind of pantomime around Christmas. Secondly this weekend sees Calderdale Theatre School’s production of Coram Boy and as an ex-member of the school as well as being their webmaster, I said I’d go and see it.
I have a friend, Ben, who runs his own theatre company. They are a bunch of people he’s got together through work, university, theatre school and the like, and they put on plays. Their work is, to be honest, generally ‘challenging’. I read but didn’t see their last work. I’ve just come back from the first dress rehearsal of their current work. [read more]