Sheilah Winn-ers

Luke French was Romeo. Bridie Blundell was Juliet. Wyatt Baldwin was Paris. Myself, Gray Dawson, was Friar Laurence. Riley Spencer was Balthasar. Kate Vernon was the page. Ms Kate Olliver did a bird whistle off-stage at one point (and also was director). Liv Naylor was Tybalt’s dead body lying under a sheet the whole time. And together, in April this year we performed the best 15-minute scene of Shakespeare EVER performed!!(…in Canterbury… as part of the Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Festival…on the second day of the festival… I think someone else won the first round)!

The SGCNZ University of Otago Sheilah Winn Shakespeare Festival is an annual event in which students from secondary schools all over New Zealand perform 5 or 15 minute excerpts from any and all Shakespeare plays. This year, Burnside submitted two scenes: a 5-minute scene (Act III scene ii of A Midsummer Night’s Dream - the fight scene) performed by Kaspian Evatt, Dylan Jonkers, Sophie Olliver and Annabel Williams, and our aforementioned 15-minute piece from Romeo and Juliet (Act V scene iii - the everybody-dies-except-the-friar scene). On April 10, we performed these scenes at the Regionals leg of the Festival on the Christchurch Boys High stage.

Prior to the Festival, both casts had spent months of early mornings, lunchtimes, morning teas and the odd study period constructing and rehearsing these scenes. After the performance, I think we all felt that our work had paid off; Regionals was the best run we ever had. Performing such well-known characters in essentially a forgein language is a daunting task, but the audience was wonderfully responsive, and the high emotion of this intense scene was felt throughout the room. Whilst my cast mates’ performances were all brilliant, the real credit for this success must go to our director, Ms Olliver. Not only did she somehow effectively arrange this complicated scene to show the story in a clear continuous way, and guide us through the extreme highs and lows of the scene to create an emotionally compelling journey, she also somehow managed to get Luke to stop giggling in only a matter of weeks!

Overall, feedback from our performance suggested success. Judges’ comments labelled us as “anachronistic and androgynous” (which takes my vote as our band name when we are inevitably signed as New Zealand’s next greatest Elizabethan-rock group), and applauded Luke for his “GREAT poisoning!!!”. The ultimate praise, however, came at the final prize-giving. Ms Olliver won Best Director of the festival (massively deserved), and we won Best 15-minute Scene! Of course, this was a heartwarming recognition of all the work we’d put in, and it was affirming to have our talent recognised, and brilliant to win a title for our school but far more importantly, this meant…we would be travelling to Wellington for the next leg of the competition!