LUCRECE - A transformational Shakespeare project

After four years of increasingly successful youth productions by the Young Auckland Shakespeare Company, The Auckland Shakespeare Company has chosen 2016, the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, to stage their first professional production.

LUCRECE is a reimagining of Shakespeare's narrative poem, The Rape of Lucrece, first published in 1594. Working from the original text, four actors and a musician have devised a theatrical presentation that honours the 400-year-old work and brings it into the 21st century. Now more than ever, when rape culture is being closely examined, this work highlights the issue of such a horrific crime, its devastating consequences, and the ultimate effects on everyone involved.

Transforming a poem into a performance has been a unique journey for the company. LUCRECE will be brought to life with spoken word, supported by a haunting original musical score from Paul McLaney, and explored through stylised movement from a chorus of male actors as well. We've brought a range of aesthetic elements together in order to create the nightmare that Lucrece - and those closest to her - have to go through.

A performance of this poem has never been seen before in Auckland. This is a rare opportunity to see Shakespeare at its most intense, while exploring themes that have rippled through time and are as important now as they ever were.

LUCRECE plays at TAPAC theatre from 26-30 October, and stars Anthea Hill, Daniel Watterson, Sheena Irving and Calum Gittins, with original music composed by Paul McLaney ("�on the threshold of something big" - Mike Alexander, Stuff).

Click here for the LUCRECE Facebook event

Click here for the Auckland Shakespeare Company website

Click here to buy tickets the show

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The Auckland Shakespeare Company is a registered charitable trust. We have had generous support from Auckland Live and Four Winds Foundation for the initial development of this project, but we have sadly been unsuccessful in our many, many funding applications for the actual staging of the show. We are coming to you, our amazing crowd of supporters, to crowdfund the significant but unavoidable cost of theatre hire for the incredible TAPAC black box theatre.