![]() ![]() “We wanted to delve deeper into that notion of women’s place in history and the influences of patriarchy on even a group that are all female… the influence of the patriarchy is still very much in the room with them,” says Mee, a lead writer on the new production. In this case, the all-female cast in the dressing room decides Shakespeare’s Hamlet no longer serves them and seeks to destroy it and create something new that does – this leads to a clash of ideas backstage, while the on-stage performance goes off the rails. This duality of the performance allows Good Company Theatre to explore theatrical and broader societal ideologies in an interconnected way. Now, the script has been developed into Hamlet in the Other Room: an immersive experience in which two performances – one of Hamlet, and one of the dressing room backstage – unfold at once. This led to the formation of Good Company Theatre. In early 2020, when the cast were all centralised in Adelaide again, a Facetime call from director Zola Allen during quarantine sparked the idea of revisiting that original script to see what could be made of it. Kidaan Zelleke with fellow Good Company Theatre member Evie Leonard. ![]() “Someone was like, ‘Oh, what if we ran two shows at once? What if we had Hamlet in one room, and in the other a backstage show of a group of actors performing Hamlet but you only saw the dressing room? What if we had them happening concurrently and had the audience walking through?’,” says Zelleke. Leading up to the 2019 performance, the cast discussed possibilities for the text if there had been more time for development. “Our original concept was this group of all-female and non-binary actors performing a production of Hamlet and debating the supposedly universal themes of the hero and the everyman character of Hamlet, and whether or not that served the script or characters,” says Mee. The friends collaborated to write the script for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are… which followed the backstage discussions and dynamics of a group of actors performing Hamlet. Zelleke adds: “We came from a very eclectic training program, where we were able to try our hand at devising and writing and directing things, and kind of just being artistically involved in performance in different ways.” “We were friends, and we had all graduated within a few years of each other from Adelaide College of the Arts and we wanted to test our creative capacities and put our training to use.” “It sort of came about out of necessity and just wanting to work,” says Mee, reflecting on what initially brought the collective members together in 2019. The collective is made up of women and non-binary theatre-makers who are striving to re-frame the way audiences consider the theatrical cannon, as well as demonstrate what is possible for the future of Adelaide’s theatre scene.Ĭo-producers Kidaan Zelleke and Poppy Mee – who are both also actors – were part of the first iteration of the show, titled Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are…, performed at the 2019 Adelaide Fringe. Good Company Theatre is one of these freshly minted collectives, about to draw the curtain on its debut, original production, Hamlet in the Other Room. With time and creative energy to spare, there’s been a boom in new theatre companies. A town built on resilience learns to diversify Search All categoriesįor the better part of two years, artists and creatives have found themselves back in their home cities. ![]()
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