• Celebrating The Bard,  Team

    “Playing The Bard” returns to Howard Fine Acting Studio Australia in September #Shakespeare #class #teaching

    We are so delighted to announce that Republic Creator/Director, Sally McLean will be returning to Howard Fine Acting Studios Australia with her popular course “Playing The Bard: Shakespeare In Performance” from Wednesday, September 12th! Sally first taught this new course in April/May this year with a fabulous class of 12 students, teaching at the Howard Fine Studio in North Melbourne. Find out more about Sally and her relationship to Shakespeare in this interview by Catherine Hallam at the Howard Fine Acting Studio Australia website: https://www.howardfinestudio.com.au/blog/2018/4/16/talking-shakespeare-with-sally-mclean In this next round of class, Sally will take up to 12 students through the world of Shakespeare and his texts, working on both scenes…

  • Discussion

    The Ides of March … Did Shakespeare get it right?

    Thanks to Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”, the phrase “Beware the Ides of March” has become something of a common saying. But why? And was Shakespeare correct in the date and depicting the events of Julius Caesar’s death? The answer is “yes” to both, even the bit about the Soothsayer warning Caesar about the “Ides of March” and Caesar dismissing the warning as a bunch of nonsense (which he didn’t live to regret). But what IS the Ides of March? The Ides of March marks the anniversary of Julius Caeser’s murder on March 15, 44 BC, by 60 of his senators at the age of 55. It is also marks the halfway…

  • Discussion,  Video

    Shakespeare In Prison – showing how the Bard can change lives

    The debate around whether Shakespeare is still relevant continues.  But while the discussion could easily be all academic, the real proof is in taking the Bard off the page and bringing him back to the people – all the people – in performance.  And not just as audience, but as participants. Which brings us to the point of today’s Discussion blog post.  While browsing Facebook last week, the video below popped up on my feed (thank you Facebook algorithm), which was fascinating and showed just how useful Shakespeare can be to us humans still – but only if we get to perform his works, rather than just see them, or…

  • Behind The Scenes,  Project Updates,  Team,  Video

    Do you have a favourite Shakespeare play? Would you play Shakespeare nude? Hear from our cast on this and more during the Shakespeare Republic Season One Launch!

    Welcome to a big week for Shakespeare Republic!  This week we finally begin screening the series after many months of planning and hard work from all the cast and crew and we couldn’t be more excited! Further to our post about our fabulous launch event held last week at the lovely Courthouse Hotel in North Melbourne, we can also finally release the full video filmed by the talented Paul Anthony Nelson of Cinema Viscera and hosted by Special Guest, Shane Savage from, among other things, Australian Web TV phenomenon, Chris & Josh The Webseries where he plays “Chris” as well as co-writing and co-producing (really, it’s so exciting to see how well…

  • Fun Facts,  Video

    VIDEO: The Bardolator: Who Was Shakespeare? (in under two minutes)

    Today we bring you a quick, fun look at who Shakespeare was and how we ended up with his works, courtesy of our fun facts segment, “The Bardolator”. Animated and voiced by Shakespeare Republic Director, Sally McLean (created for a competition over a decade ago from that organisation’s script of Shakespeare “facts” that had to be used in the video), here’s a potted history of Who Was Shakespeare? (in under two minutes). We will be bringing you more videos from the team in the next few weeks, but right now rehearsals are underway for our first four episodes and it is creative madness!  In the meantime, we couldn’t resist sharing…