Short Tales
Many of the cast and crew of Short Tales 2024 in the Green Room
When we set out to create an incubator programme for Shakespeare in Paradise, we had no idea how much it would take off. We had no idea either how important the programme would become not only for SiP, but more broadly for theatre in Nassau and for the wider performing arts community in Nassau. All we wanted to do was to provide a space to inspire new writers and generate new plays for The Bahamas.
We soon realized that Short Tales was not only going to serve new writers. It also needed to train new directors. After all, what’s the point of having new short plays if we didn’t take that opportunity also to give people who wanted more experience or confidence in directing for stage the chance to get it? And so we decided that Short Tales would be an evening of new writing put on by early-stage directors.
And then we had our first audition … and we quickly realized that it was also a place to develop new actors as well. There’s a whole lot less pressure learning lines for a ten-minute play than learning lines for a whole Shakespeare tragedy (and that’s what a lot of new actors seem to worry about—learning the lines, though that’s not all there is to it). And so the Short Tales Company was born.
A Tale of Two Robbers by Deon Simms, directed by Terneille "TADA" Burrows, featuring BahaMian Trae, Nicole Musgrove, Alex, Nirico Musgrove, Ejay Francis, and Seantia Thompson.
Out of the Short Tales company have come directors, producers, actors, stage crew, and community. That’s why the first image of this post about Short Tales 2024 is a photo of the company backstage, rather than images of the plays we put on, because it’s the company which is transforming our theatre and transforming individual lives. It’s through Short Tales that people can act on their dreams of going on stage—the risk is low, the standard high, the company supportive. It’s also through Short Tales that writers can play with the ideas in their heads. We’ve seen things on our Short Tales stage from vampires to time-travellers, from murderers to idealistic talk show hosts out to change their little corners of their worlds. We’ve seen monologues, histories, rollicking farces. We’ve had Bahamian dialect and standard English poetry. We’ve gone to the gates of heaven and peeked at the depths of hell (burn, baby, burn). We’ve heard from swimming pigs and Shakespeare-quoting gangsters: we’ve had Death and Light and Reason and Doubt on our stage; there’ve been elephants in the front room and funeral repasts in the back yard. Women have been battered and have battered back. We’ve lived through lotteries and hurricanes.
We’re telling Bahamians’ tales.
Antonio Thompson and River S. in La Tormenta by Inderia Green, directed by Julie Ritchie-Bingham
This year’s Short Tales was no exception. For the first time, we had ten more or less new directors at the helms of our plays, and we have had the work of ten writers featured as well. It’s not always like this; sometimes people direct more than one piece, and sometimes writers have more than one play accepted, but this year the pool of talent was deep enough for us to realize the dream we had from the start. We also had a new crop of actors, some of them performing for the first time, others making the sidestep from singing in church to speaking before a crowd. We are also training new crews, technicians, and a new production team. This year’s Short Tales was overseen and managed not by me (Nicolette Bethel) but by a production team of veterans from earlier Short Tales, who ran rehearsals and performances and showed me that Short Tales is in good hands.
Poster image by Madison Cartwright. Art direction by Julia Ames
Short Tales Curtain Call
Hamlet 50/50
Patrice Francis as Queen Gertrude, T-Day as Hamlet, and Julian Reid as the Ghost
Hamlet 50/50 kicked off on Tuesday September 24, playing to a student audience. On Wednesday September 25, it opened to the public.
It was a roaring success—so much so that the theatre was packed on closing night!
With T-Day shouldering the role of Hamlet, supported by Jovanna Hepburn as Lady Horatio, Patrice Francis as Queen Gertrude and Danielle Fields as Ophelia, Sarah Burnett’s cut of Hamlet 50/50 sped through the evening, moving from crisis to crisis and foregrounding not only the melancholy Prince of Denmark but also his friends and courtiers.
Our production was stripped down in more ways than one. Casting issues led us to combine the roles of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern into a single character, Guildencrantz. There were two Players only, the Player King and the Player Queen, and they had so few words they needed no instruction on how to speak the speech.
The cast of Hamlet 50/50 with Peter and Vanessa
In the second week, the writers of Hamlet 50/50 joined us. Vanessa Morosco and Peter Simon Hilton couldn’t be more enthusiastic, supportive, and generous individuals, and we were honoured to host them. Their time with us began with a visit to the University to meet with some English students to talk about the 50/50 vision. Then we went to dinner with Sarah, the director, and some others. On Thursday they attended the Hamlet 50/50 matinee and on Friday, they came to the closing night of the show.
In all, we were stoked with our production of Hamlet 50/50. From the poster image, created by Julia Ames, to our closing production, we are so happy we took it on!
Two Weeks In!
Time flies so fast!
The cast of Short Tales taking their inaugural curtain call
It seems as though it was only last week that we were announcing the kickoff of SiP here on this blog, and now we’re at the end of the first two weeks.
Over the next sets of posts, we’ll break down what has happened and where we are right now.
For this post, enjoy some of the photographs from the various shows that we’ve already presented!
D. Sean Nottage, Patrice Francis, Chigozie Ijeoma, Tahlia Peterson and Garri Rigby in Shakespeare in Paradise 2024's Hamlet 50/50
SiP 2024 kicks off
It all begins with an idea.
Rehearsals for the 16th annual Shakespeare in Paradise theatre festival are now fully underway! As usual, rehearsals began eight weeks out from opening night, with Hamlet 50/50 and Short Tales getting going on July 29. Both productions remain hard at work in the Winston V. Saunders dressing room and the Philip A. Burrows Black Box.
Julie Ritchie-Bingham gathers the cast of La Tormenta by Inderia Reeba Green as part of Short Tales 2024. Photo credit: Nicolette Bethel
Patrice Francis (Queen Gertrude) and Hamlet (T-Day) rehearsing the “closet scene” in Hamlet 50/50. Photo credit: Nicolette Bethel
As August progresses, life will get even busier at the Dundas: the casts for Ralphie’s Barbershop and A Merry Regiment of Women will move in as they remount those productions, originally performed as part of the 2024 Ringplay Season. Rounding out our offerings in the third week of our festival will be December by Patrick Brown, a Jamaican import directed by Henry Muttoo of Cayman and Guyana.
Our Hamlet is not your father’s Hamlet: it’s a version created by Vanessa Morosco and Peter Simon Hilton with a view to establishing gender equity in this classic play. Shakespeare’s original gives the main character of Hamlet no fewer than seven soliloquies and a good 2/3 of the stage time. Mindful of the growing number of women in the Shakespeare universe, Morosco and Hilton have reframed the play, distributing the stage time and soliloquies to female characters, adding excitement and a different edge to the familiar conflict. If you know this play, come and see how it’s done—and if you don’t, come and experience this age-old tale of life, death and revenge.
This year’s festival involves over 100 people: an acting company of approximately 50 members, with the writers, directors, stage hands, administrators and technical crew making up the remainder.
Edward Knowles rehearses the cast of Forethought by J Ben Hepburn and Patrice Francis as part of Short Tales 2024. Photo credit: Nicolette Bethel
As usual, we offer both student and senior matinee performances and our regular evening performances. We also offer discounted season tickets and various individual discounts for groups, students and seniors.
For further information concerning the festival you can contact us at the Dundas at 393-3728 or 394-7179 or email us at admin@shakespeareinparadise.org.