Wyvern House is delighted to announce the upcoming 2016 Wyvern Shakespeare Festival. A century ago, at the time of Shakespeare’s tercentenary, Newington boys raised money for a planned Shakespeare memorial that never eventuated: the anniversary of Shakespeare’s death coincided with the very first ANZAC Day commemorations. This year we join once again in the global celebrations for Shakespeare’s quatercentenary, in Week 9 (20-24 June) the students from Kindergarten to Year 6 will be working with their classroom and specialist teachers along with – Bell Shakespeare’s ‘Artist in Residence’ program – to conduct in-depth studies of Shakespeare’s plays.

The creative powerhouse of the Bell Shakespeare Company has been inspiring new audiences for Shakespeare since 1990. A creative powerhouse committed to producing audacious and relevant plays for an Australian context, Bell Shakespeare has become one of Australia’s most influential cultural institutions.

This year, Wyvern is especially excited as members of the company will work intensively with our students, guiding them through the plot, characters, language, creative and critical thinking activities in some of Shakespeare’s best known plays. Years 5 & 6 are studying Macbeth, Years 3 & 4 are investigating A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Years 1 & 2 are looking at The Tempest while our Kindergarten classes will be introduced to Shakespeare through Twelfth Night.

Kindergarten – Twelfth Night
‘What country, friend, is this?’

Shipwrecked and abandoned on a foreign shore, our heroine Viola disguises herself as a boy and goes into service for the duke Orsino. Viola quickly develops feelings for the duke, but does not dare reveal her secret. Believing she is a boy, the duke sends the disguised Viola to woo the determinedly single Lady Olivia. In a comical turn of events, Olivia falls in love with Viola! As the plot twists and turns every character in this play is eventually forced to reveal their true nature. 

Year 1 and Year 2 – The Tempest
‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on’

On an enchanted island, the sorcerer Prospero lives with the spirits he has enslaved and his young daughter Miranda. As the play opens, Prospero conjures a huge tempest, washing ashore his usurping brother and other courtiers from Prospero’s past as the Duke of Milan. As Prospero uses his magic to taunt his enemies, Miranda encounters and rapidly falls in love with the young Ferdinand. Nothing can be resolved until Prospero gives the spirits their freedom, forgives his brother and agrees to destroy his books of magic.

Year 3 and Year 4 – A Midsummer Night’s Dream
‘The course of true love never did run smooth’

On this strange midsummer night, the fairies make fools of mere mortals. Escaping an arranged marriage, four young people leave their court and enter the woods. There Oberon, the king of the fairies, orders his servant Puck to confuse them with a love potion. As the lovers run amok in the forest, a group of tradesmen rehearse a tragic play to unintentionally comic effect.

Year 5 and Year 6 – Macbeth
‘Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble’

The ‘Scottish play’. A victorious warrior chooses to heed the prophecies of a group of witches, betrays his king and descends into madness. In Shakespeare’s famously bloody meditation on the nature of reality, loyalty and predestination, nothing is as it seems.

Did you know?
Theatrical tradition has it that Shakespeare himself played the role of the king’s ghost in Hamlet. Be on the look out in Week 9, in case the ghost of Shakespeare appears in the halls of Wyvern.

If you have any interest in or experience with Shakespeare please feel free to reach out to your child’s teacher with any suggestions or ideas to assist. The Wyvern Shakespeare festival is an opportunity to reflect on the impact that Shakespeare’s writing has had on the collective imagination, both within the English-speaking world and beyond, from the Globe theatre in Southwark to across the globe. Over four centuries the ways in which Shakespeare’s plays have been performed has changed constantly, as have the ways in which audiences and readers respond to the man who, as his contemporary Ben Jonson claimed, ‘was not for an age, but for all time’.

This event is sponsored and made possible Wyvern P & F.

Richard Baker
Deputy Head (Years 4-6) Wyvern House