Shakespeare comes to the 1980s
By Graeme McNaughton/The Oshawa Express
For many in the Canadian LGBT community, 1989 was a turning point. It had been 20 years since the Stonewall Riots in New York City following police raids at the Stonewall Inn, a gay club in the Greenwich Village, that many have coined the start of the modern LGBT rights movement. It had only been eight years since Operation Soap, which saw Toronto police raid four bathhouses, arresting more than 300 men – the largest mass arrest in Canada’s history since the October Crisis of 1970. It had been seven years since the first reported case of HIV/AIDS in Canada – a disease that, when it first arrived in North America, strongly hit the LGBT community.
But things were picking up, with LGBT rights starting to be recognized in Canada.
It is among this setting that the Driftwood Theatre Group chose to set a play by William Shakespeare.
The production of Taming of the Shrew, a late-16th century comedy by the English playwright, is part of the group’s annual Bard’s Bus Tour, which will see the play performed in 28 different locations across the province over the next month.
When looking at a play that has been labeled as misogynistic and demeaning to women, Jeremy Smith, the performance’s director, says he wanted to flip it on its head and explore what would happen if the relationship between Petruchio, the play’s male lead, and Katherina, his wife who originally did not want to be in the relationship but was made into an obedient spouse by his psychological torments, was a consensual one.
“From there, you start to think about equality, you start to think about consent and acceptance. And I think all of those things are top of mind right now in contemporary life,” Smith told The Oshawa Express ahead of its July 9 show at Parkwood Estates.
“You think about the Jian Ghomeshi trial, you think about what happened in Orlando last month, you think about the fact that we know that, still, in our contemporary life, women’s salaries are still 50 to 75 per cent of men’s salaries.”
While the intent behind the production’s more modern adaptation could be seen as a social message, Smith says he still wants to keep the play, in some aspects, as it was intended when it was written – as a piece that could make you laugh.
“As with all art, I wanted to give it a bit of distance. I wanted it to exist as a comedy,” he says.
“And that meant giving it a framework that would allow for that and, from my perspective, the 1980s and specifically 1989 in this case, wrote it at a time when certain advancements had been made for gender equality, racial equality and non-heteronormative lifestyles, but we still had a long way to go.”
While the play’s poster features themes of submission- and domination-based relationships – Petruchio is wearing a dog collar and Katherina is blindfolded – Smith says the play is appropriate for children. However, parents should still have a chat with their children about what they are about to see.
“We have had a lot of people asking us if this play is going to be appropriate for children. Our performances are appropriate for families,” he says.
“And with this performance, I would say that it is appropriate for the family, but like all of Shakespeare’s plays, they weren’t written for children. If you’re going to come see it, you should have a conversation with what the play is about before you join us.”
Driftwood Theatre Group’s production of Taming of the Shrew will return to Durham Region later this summer, with performances scheduled for July 26 at Rotary Park in Ajax, Aug. 9 at Celebration Square in Whitby, Aug 11 at Esplanade Square in Pickering, Aug. 12 Roswell Park in Clarington and Aug. 14 at Scugog Shores Historical Museum in Port Perry.