KING LEAR IS DEAD, Old Red Lion Theatre
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Shakespeare lovers really are being spoilt at this year’s Camden Fringe, with Old Red Lion Theatre presenting SHAKEFEST, a whole festival within a festival, and as the name suggests, all based around the Bard’s works. We’ve already published interviews with a number of the shows playing under this banner, which you can find here and here’s another one for you.
Shakespeare in the Pub‘s KING LEAR IS DEAD will play at Old Red Lion Theatre from 18 to 21 August, with tickets available here. As the title suggests, this is King Lear, but with a twist. We grabbed some time with Katya Schwarz and Brenna Simpson to delve a little more into what to expect.
What can audiences expect from the show?
KS: A bit of violence, lots of rain, and a healthy sprinkling of tap dancing. They can absolutely expect Shakespeare’s original words, and his impeccable, razor-sharp feeling for tragedy, but with his just as perfect feeling for the absurd foregrounded too. The Fool is already a famously dominant figure in this play, and here, played by the incredible Luka Wellman, he infects almost everything – our Lear is what he makes it. It’s a tongue-in-cheek, eclectic cabaret of gender-confused, pitch-black tragicomedy, and it’s King Lear. It’s about theatre, performance, memory, perspective, trauma, and puppets. It has musical numbers that I shan’t reveal – you’ll have to get a ticket to find out.
Is Camden Fringe going to be the show’s first time on stage, or have you already performed elsewhere?
KS: We’ve just finished a sold out run at the Brighton Fringe, which was a fantastic way to discover everything we love about the play, and from which to create the new script we’ll be working with in Camden. To be totally honest, it nearly stopped there, but a friend sent me the callout for Shakespearean Fringe pieces as part of ORL’s Shakefest, and the opportunity to be part of our kind of work being prioritised and highlighted at a fringe level was really one we couldn’t pass up. Since then, we’ve just been getting more and more excited about what we can do with more time with the piece and a different kind of venue – all our weirdest theatrical fantasies have become known as “Camden thoughts” in the rehearsal room, so I can guarantee it’s always getting bigger, better, and stranger.
What was it that drew you to this show and role?
BS: The casting call was for a queer Shakespeare production. It was important to me to be involved in more queer theatre spaces, and I liked how I had the freedom to audition with any speech I wanted regardless of gender, so thought I’d give it a go. I didn’t even think I’d get cast, so I took the self-tape just like a mini project in itself – then when I got the offer for the titular role I was surprised, but so excited. I never thought I’d be cast as King Lear ever in my career, let alone in my 20s. I was drawn to accepting the role because I was fascinated to see how I would portray someone who has over 50 years of life experience more than I do, and how we could work on making it clear to the audience that I am an elderly king with three daughters without being stereotypical.
What is it about your character that you most enjoy?
BS: Lear contains multitudes – it’s hard to get across the whole arc of his emotions in approx.two hours. Upon first read, I felt he and I were very different; I saw a hot headed, volatile, very privileged man who grew up with no one ever saying no to him, the highest status character in the play. Despite my original perception, there’s actually a lot I have in common with him. His upbringing manifests in his toxic masculinity, and he’s afraid of showing “soft” emotions. While I am the most emotionally open book you’ll ever find, both Lear and I feel very overwhelmed by how deeply we feel our emotions. Being neurocomplex, I find the way my mind works sometimes to be scarily like what Lear goes through. We both also have a deep sense of justice and make it known when something isn’t right. Overall though, the trait that I most enjoy about Lear is he is so fiercely protective of his youngest daughter Cordelia. For me, there’s no one I care more about in the whole world than my youngest sister, which was highlighted to me even more by playing Lear. I most enjoy this trait of his because despite his actions at the beginning of the play, the love he has for Cordelia and its relatability to my own life is what I’ve used as the thrum beneath all the decisions we see him make.
How challenging has this role been for you?
BS: King Lear is hands down the most difficult role I’ve ever played. We have a lot of differences physically, and in terms of life experience and gender identity. I wrote my dissertation at drama school on gender performativity, and my experience of my final year Spring season play; I was cast in a role that was originally written as a man, which felt off balance in my body, and I realised that was because I wasn’t used to roles that had a higher status. I’ve found a way of being Lear in my own body that feels strong, but sometimes I find myself slipping back into my own physicality because I get energised by the talent of the cast!
Lear’s speeches also have the most “chewy” words I’ve ever had the pleasure of learning; it took me a long time to get my head around them, and I struggled with my self-confidence in this role in the beginning, worried that I wouldn’t be able to remember everything, or that I wouldn’t be “good” – I feel so supported by the cast and directors that now being in the space I just have fun with it, and I’m excited to see what a Camden audience thinks of the work we’ve created.
What brought you all together?
KS: Having come from a background of extracurricular university theatre, I’m a massive advocate for the humble social media callout, and whether or not it’ll always work, it really did this time. When the process started this January, there were a tentative three of us on the team, and now there’s around twenty-five, which is crazy. Almost none of the cast knew each other prior, and now they’re really tight-knit and work together with such fantastic intimacy and instinct, and it does feel really weird sometimes that all of this is just because of three Instagram posts and a few printouts in Brighton cafes. Ultimately we all love theatre and love Shakespeare, and we find this play really interesting – sentimentally, it’s basically King Lear that brought us together.
If you had to describe your show as a meal what would it be?
KS: Oddly enough, me and our co-director, Isaac, were talking about something adjacent to this when we started reconceiving the script for Camden. What I find calling to me is a table of Waitrose (it’s important they’re bougie) “picky bits”, with something like a dead cat whacked on top – a nice family get together gone spectacularly, even ridiculously wrong. There’s something really weird that is unquestionably present, that everyone’s trying to ignore so they’ll be able to go home, but dad said they’re not allowed to until everything on the table has been eaten. This question is the most serious of all to me.
Our thanks to Katya and Brenna for taking the time to chat. KING LEAR IS DEAD plays at Old Red Lion Theatre from Monday 18 to Thursday 21 August.
