For the third year running, students from Anglia Ruskin University’s Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences have worked with staff and practitioners at Shakespeare’s Globe on a special project to bring the themes of Shakespeare’s plays to the screen. The film-makers visited the Globe, and learned about our unique spaces and the theatre culture of Shakespeare’s time.

Working with practitioner Kevin Bennett, they explored selections of text from our four summer season shows, and developed pitches for their short films which were selected by student producer Alannah Beaumont, and the Globe’s Head of Research Dr Will Tosh.

Now five unique short films – motion picture features in miniature – are ready for release. They capture the imagination, ambition and vast creative potential of Shakespeare’s works in new stories inspired by A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, As You Like It, and The Comedy of Errors.

For a third year running the film students at ARU have dazzled with their creativity and ambition. They’ve spun five captivating new stories out of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Comedy of Errors, As You Like It and Macbeth. I think the students’ artistic superpower is their ability to zero in on the plays’ most compelling themes, from female friendship to magical metamorphoses, from the power of language to both illuminate and to wound, to the terrifying persistence of guilt and trauma. Gasp!, Wicked Dreams, Lost From Sea, Dress Rehearsal and A Midsummer’s Nightmare have helped me understand Shakespeare in new ways – and they are stories that prove these students will be film-makers to watch.”

 

— Dr Will Tosh, Head of Research at Shakespeare’s Globe