{"id":23842,"date":"2023-04-12T09:00:38","date_gmt":"2023-04-12T16:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=23842"},"modified":"2023-03-30T12:03:23","modified_gmt":"2023-03-30T19:03:23","slug":"goodnight-desdemona-good-morning-juliet-takes-novel-look-at-shakespeare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2023\/04\/12\/goodnight-desdemona-good-morning-juliet-takes-novel-look-at-shakespeare\/","title":{"rendered":"Goodnight Desdemona, (Good Morning Juliet)<\/em> takes novel look at Shakespeare"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blue Bridge Repertory Theatre is known for thinking outside the box, and Goodnight Desdemona, (Good Morning Juliet)<\/i> is no exception to that. Written in 1988 by Canadian author Ann Marie Macdonald, Goodnight Desdemona<\/i> is a comedy written through the eyes and thoughts of English professor Constance Ledbelly, who, while in the process of proving underlying meanings in Shakespeare\u2019s plays for her thesis, ends up living in her own imagination, in many different times and spaces.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is actually [Macdonald\u2019s] first play,\u201d says Blue Bridge artistic director Tamara McCarthy. \u201cShe did such a great job, though, with this debut, that it\u2019s now become an iconic classic play that is studied by theatre students all across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCarthy says Goodnight Desdemona<\/i> is a feminist piece, so it also has an education component to it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a comedy, and very clever,\u201d says McCarthy. \u201cConstance Ledbelly, the protagonist, is trying to prove that Othello<\/i> and Romeo and Juliet<\/i> are in fact comedies, not tragedies. She is just plodding along, and not getting any advancement in her workplace, a familiar story. While going through her office waste basket, she gets sucked into this vortex, entering the world of 17th-century Shakespearean times.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Lucy McNulty plays Constance Ledbelly in Blue Bridge Theatre\u2019s Goodnight Desdemona, (Good Morning Juliet)<\/em> (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

McCarthy says that she learns something new every time she reads the play.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always discover a bunch of new gems and hidden treasures in the script, so I\u2019m really excited to be working on it,\u201d she says. \u201cIt is, like I said, a Canadian classic, even though it was just written in the 1980s.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCarthy says that being a collaborator is her top value when directing a piece.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPutting a team together who really work well together, who jam on ideas and create things collectively\u2014that\u2019s how I like to work, so when we held auditions, it was important to me to cast not just who I thought would be good in these parts. It was about providing opportunity,\u201d she says. \u201cSo, we held open auditions; we had over 150 submissions from across the country. It was quite surprising.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCarthy is excited about the diverse team working on Goodnight Desdemona<\/i>, which includes Lucy McNulty, who plays Ledbelly.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho doesn\u2019t want to play Constance Ledbelly?\u201d says McCarthy. \u201cShe has even more lines than Hamlet, who I guess had the most lines before, so she is a very powerful lead. We have, in fact, quite a range of folks in the show. So much talent.\u201d<\/p>\n

There has been an enormous amount of research done to produce Goodnight Desdemona<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn general, audiences won\u2019t realize what goes into putting on something like this,\u201d says McCarthy. \u201cWho is the character? What time period do they come from? There are a lot of shared documents going into our Google Drive as our team figures it out, before meeting with the costume designer to go over preliminary sketches.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCarthy says she is taking care of the choreography, and has also hired a fight director, as there is sword fighting involved.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like acting gymnastics,\u201d she says. \u201cThere so many people on the team you really do not know about when you\u2019re just watching the show. I\u2019m learning a lot just by doing this. It gets me thinking about when we are staging this, how we really must find the right sort of pocket. A lot of it has to do with casting, because there are many actors who can stand up and be funny… But playing the honest truth of a character, it\u2019s way funnier if they\u2019re living their truth. Getting actors who aren\u2019t afraid to get up and be in a vulnerable state.\u201d<\/p>\n

Goodnight Desdemona, (Good Morning Juliet)
\n<\/i>Various times, Tuesday, April 25 to Sunday, May 7
\nVarious prices,
\nBlue Bridge Theatre
\nbluebridgetheatre.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blue Bridge Repertory Theatre is known for thinking outside the box, and Goodnight Desdemona, (Good Morning Juliet) is no exception to that. Written in 1988 by Canadian author Ann Marie Macdonald, Goodnight Desdemona is a comedy written through the eyes and thoughts of English professor Constance Ledbelly, who, while in the process of proving underlying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23843,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,286],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-april-5-2023"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23842"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23844,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23842\/revisions\/23844"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}