LincolnShakespeare.co.uk
Title
The Lincoln Shakespeare Company - Home
Description
How it all began...
In 1992 a small group of dissillusioned would-be actors met in an upstairs room to discuss the possibility of putting on a play that the public would actually want to see. Should we put on Ayckbourn or Shakespeare? Shakespeare was decided upon. Should we put on a comedy or a tragedy? Comedy it was. Would we get more than two men and a dog at the performance? That would remain to be seen. So began the Lincoln Shakespeare Company and looking back at those first heady days of fun and uncertainty it seems incredible that we put on plays with a handful of enthusiasts and absolutely no money. I remember being thrilled when 35 people turned up for our first performance! The seats were placed on the grass having been lovingly wheeled down from the Cathedral, the weather held for all 4 performances and only one audience member sat on a chair that sank into the earth and spent the second half listing to one side. That was Twelfth Night mark one.
25 plays later we are only slightly wiser, we spend much more money, we play to audiences in excess of 35 and we still have fun. I have fond memories of all the plays; how could I forget Romeo and Juliet where Jo (Clark)'s foot got stuck in the trench at the Bishop's Old Palace and we corpsed to such a degree that we spent the rest of the play in decidedly damp tights, or A Midsummer Night's Dream where we used the torches for the first time and regularly singed each other. Or the Scottish play in the cathedral where no-one heard a word and the show seemed dogged by snow and strange happenings. I recall Antony and Cleopatra where the stage was so small that we spent the whole play apologetically squeezing past each other. The Merchant of Venice where we all had difficulty in remembering the lines, the poor man who collapsed at the gala performance of Hamlet and Love's Labour's Lost where I realised my lifelong ambition to be a pop star.
There are fond memories of them all and of the many actors who have spent time with us and who have enriched the plays and the company by their presence. We have spent the last 9 years sewing, building, begging, panicking, learning, and making fools of ourselves in equal amounts. I have enjoyed it all.
Additional Information
- Antony And Cleopatra
- As You Like It
- Comedy Of Errors
- Hamlet
- King Lear
- Lincolnshire
- Macbeth
- Measure For Measure
- Merchant Of Venice
- Merry Wives Of Windsor
- Midsummer Nights Dream
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Othello
- Richard The Third
- Romeo And Juliet
- Shakespear
- Shakespeare
- Shrew
- Taming
- Titus Andronicus
- Twelfth Night
- Two Gentlemen Of Verona