GEORGE Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde will be going head to head in Stratford.
Rother Street Arts House is presenting a live discussion bringing together members of the companies behind Pygmalion and The Importance of Being Earnest – both currently running at the theatre – alongside scholars and commentators, for an exploration of two of theatre’s most enduring playwrights.
In Conversation: Pygmalion & The Importance of Being Earnest, taking place on August 15, offers audiences the opportunity to go behind the scenes of both productions during their runs at the venue. The free event will include rehearsal insights, discussion of text and performance.
Speakers will include Jonas Cemm, director of Pygmalion, theatre-maker and founder of SHAW2020, John Robert Partridge, artistic director of Rother Street Arts House and Tread the Boards Theatre Company, who also directs The Importance of Being Earnest and appears on stage as Henry Higgins in Pygmalion.
Joining them will be Neil Titley, author, playwright and journalist, with specialist expertise in the works of Shaw and Wilde, Vanessa Heron, chair of the Oscar Wilde Society, and Ivan Wise, editor of The Shavian and trustee of The Shaw Society
Together, the panel will explore the shared preoccupations of Shaw and Wilde—class, language, sexuality, society and theatre—and the challenges of staging their work for modern audiences.
Rather than a formal lecture, the event is .as an open conversation, followed by questions from the audience.
As Pygmalion and The Importance of Being Earnest continue their runs at Rother Street Arts House, the discussion complements the productions by offering audiences additional context from those directly involved in bringing the plays to the stage.
Visit rotherstreetarts.org for full details and tickets for both productions and In Conversation: Pygmalion and The Importance of Being Earnest.
