Butterfly Theatre began in 2013 with Boston Marriage in the Feast Festival and has produced 1 – 2 plays each year. From 2013 – 2019 we joined forces with The Wheatsheaf Hotel who were our resident base for our Beer Theatre productions but in 2020 we relocated to Holden Street Theatres producing our immersive style of theatre at The Studio in the critically acclaimed Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Shakespeare in the Bar evolved out of a merging of Butterfly Theatre’s ethos of the importance of the place and space for performance – matching the play to the venue – in this case the Box Bar at Holden Street Theatres. Director Tony Knight explains – ‘‘Bard at the Bar’, and ‘Have a Beer with Will’ were amongst those we considered for the title of this show. What they all reflect, however, is the desire to do an informal presentation of speeches from Shakespeare’s plays; and in a way directly engage with an audience. This kind of raw ‘unplugged’ intimate immediacy was very much an element in the original performances of these speeches – the audience was an active presence and participant in the action’. With regard to the narrative – “The ‘Platt’ (or ‘plot’) was a parchment theatre document that was hung up backstage in the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatres. It listed the ‘running order’ of the play in performance – scene by scene. Each scene contained the names of the characters in the scene, and sometimes the names of the actors – such as Richard Burbage, who was Shakespeare’s actor and was the first to play many of the roles that will appear tonight. This particular ‘platt’, however, is not driven by character nor play.

This is a ‘platt’ connected and interlinked by themes. These respective speeches have been taken out of context and placed within a different narrative associated with 5 major themes and subject-matters in Shakespeare’s plays. Whilst honouring original intentions, nonetheless, each speech tells its own story, weaving its own dramatic spell. Essentially, they are virtually all dramatic journey’s from a state of ‘uncertainty’ to ‘certainty’; from a question that may or may not be answered. It is, as Harold Bloom noted, as if we are overhearing and listening to ‘tic-toc’ of someone’s thinking”

Shakespeare in the Bar … Produced by Butterfly Theatre … directed by Tony Knight.
Players: Leah Lowe, Bronwyn Ruciak, Russell Slater, Andrew Smith
Featuring original musical composition by Alan John. Musical Direction by Jodie O’Regan