Ophelia
Play Reading
London Performance Studios is pleased to present this evening’s reading of Ophelia (1979) by Melissa Murray, directed by Kaleya Baxe.
Originally produced by lesbian theatre company Hormone Imbalance and premiered at the Action Space Drill Hall in 1979, the play is a queer-feminist inversion of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, in which narrative, characters, and the relationships between them are rewritten to these political ends. Gertrude becomes the Queen, there is no Claudius, and Ophelia runs away with her maidservant rather than resign to a marriage with Hamlet arranged by familial patriarch Polonius.
The play will be published in Radical Rediscovery, a new collection of scripts written by women in the alternative theatre scene in the 1960s–80s. This is the second publication in the imprint Scores, co-commissioned by London Performance Studios and Montez Press.
This event was organised by Unfinished Histories, as part of the Associate Artists Programme.
Director
Kaleya Baxe (she/her) is a writer, director and facilitator. Her work champions historically excluded narratives in creative and collaborative environments. She studied Applied Theatre at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, and has worked on outreach projects at the Young Vic, Kiln and Arcola Theatre. As a multi-disciplinary artist she is interested in where research, art, and real life intersect, as well as writing as a form of archiving.
Cast
Andrew French : Polonius
Cherrelle Skeete : Gertrude
Khai Shaw : Hamlet
Libby Mai : Branwen
Nathan Qeeley-Dennis : Laertes
Selina Jones : Ophelia
Creative Team
Eliyana Evans: Sound Designer and Sound Technician
Kezia Adewale : Assistant Movement Director
Susan Croft : Dramaturgical Advisor
Ted Walliker : Lighting Designer
Yami ‘Rowdy’ Löfvenberg : Movement Director
About
Established in 2023, Fifty Years For The Fight For Inclusion (FYFFI) is a three year programme that commemorates the consecutive anniversaries of three key moments in the intersectional struggle for inclusivity in British post-war theatre.
It was initiated by Unfinished Histories, an organisation founded in 2006 by Dr Susan Croft and Jessica Higgs dedicated to preserving and celebrating the history of Alternative Theatre in Britain from the 1960s to the 1980s, and highlighting the pioneering contributions of marginalised Black, Asian, disabled, and LGBTQ+ communities, women, and other politically engaged theatre groups.
12/07
13/07
Dates and Times
Ophelia
Fri 12 July - Sat 13 July 2024
Location
Studio 1
London Performance Studios
Photography
Emile Clarke / LocknLens
