The East London Shakespeare Festival (ESLF) was founded in 2020, by professional actresses, and theatre makers, Ursula Early and Rosie Ward. Due to stage their first full production and tour in the same year, their plans were frustrated, but not ultimately confounded by a certain pandemic. As restrictions tailed away towards September 2021, they staged the aptly titled, and joyfully recieved 2m to Shakespeare in Langthorne Park, and in the following year brought a triumphant production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream to parks in both E11 and E17, selling more than 2000 tickets, and selling out 21 shows. Now they’re back for 2022, and Ursula Early was kind enough to make time to tell me a little of the Festival’s genesis, hopes for this year, and ambitions for the future.
Read more: Interview: Ursula Early talks about The East London Shakespeare Festival, and hopes for a joyful 2022 season of al fresco Twelfth Night.I begin by asking Ursula a little about her background, and that of the The East London Shakespeare Festival…
Well, me and my lovely co-director Rosie Ward both were professional actresses for a long time. I don’t want to say just actresses of course, it’s a hugely valid profession and I still am an actor and love it. I transitioned towards more producing, creating, and developing work probably about 10 years ago and have had various formations of what that’s look liked. I ran a company called Big Bear Theatre Company, and then more recently Blackhorse Arts which is also a Waltham Forest based theatre company.
Going further back, my parents are creatives: my dad, Fergus Early, runs a community dance & drama company called Green Candle Dance Company which is very much about combining community, performance and theatre, and dance. Also, my mum’s a choreographer, performance maker & director, so I think there is a really deep root…my aunt ran Theatre Peckham for years and years and years. I think for me, somewhere deep instinctively is very much about wanting to sort of create work with and for local communities.
I also love outdoor Shakespeare; Me and Rosie met years ago doing the Cambridge Shakespeare Festival before which is outdoor theatre in the most beautiful college gardens, I mean there couldn’t be a more beautiful way to spend a summer. There’s something really magical about the form, about being outside, and the dusk coming…it’s wonderful both to perform and watch.
Then both Rosie and myself found ourselves in Waltham Forest, both doing lots of different theatre projects with community angles in various contexts. We ended up chatting, and weirdly, we both had the same thought. She approached me, and I’d already had lots of conversations with quite a lot of Council bods about it. Bizarrely for Waltham Forest, we had all all these lovely outdoor spaces and never one professional outdoor Shakespeare. It just seemed a bit mad that that it had never been done. I thought That’s Great! Then Rosie approached me with the same thought, so it just felt very fortuitous, and it’s grown from there.
We seem to be very much in line with each other’s’ aims and wants for the company: it is Shakespeare, and we love Shakespeare… but as we know it can be distancing for some people depending on how it’s presented. There are so many universal amazing themes in there that are relevant still, and should be able to connect to everyone, but we know because of ways in which it can be presented, that the text can be quite difficult to access.
So, I was born in Hackney, we live in Waltham Forest, we’ve got these wonderful diverse communities; it’s incredibly diverse culturally, economically…lots of people have English as their second language, so yes, it’s outdoor Shakespeare but it’s also finding ways to make that relevant — and yes it’s a buzz word, accessible to those communities, both in the shows we’re creating, but also in how we get people involved.
We’ve got a community cast which will are going to be in several shows; we’ve got apprentice actor roles, in fact we we’ve got a fantastic apprentice actor this year, as we did last year. There are just all sorts of opportunities to get involved.
I follow by asking how it’s been to manage and develop the company…
In all producing there’s a big element of management, and admin, and budget and the marketing and all that…and you know we’re still a relatively new company. In some beautiful far-off world, we will be able to employ a marketing company but we’re not quite there yet! Though we do have these wonderful Kickstart Apprentices who are doing lots, in fact they’re amazing.
What’s interesting about this work, It’s not just taking a show, and again I shouldn’t say “just” because we know there’s a huge amount of work just doing that. That said, it’s not just taking a show to a traditional theatre where there’s a complete set-up, a lighting rig etc. Sure, you pay a lot for it, or however it works…but what we’re doing is actually going into non-traditional spaces, basically a lot of them have never been used as theatre spaces.
There’s a lot of licensing, events management, risk assessments…the “boring” element, but I quite like some it to an extent. A big part of the support we enjoy, is due to working with local Councils, local Councillors…so I don’t really mind that people/networking element.
When we started the company with the aim to launch the first full tour in 2020, and of course tickets were just about to go on sale and…Covid!
You know it wasn’t the end of the world as it was for so much theatre, we were probably relatively lucky, we hadn’t sold tonnes of tickets, we’d just begun…it was in some respects useful to have the time to develop our infrastructure. Miraculously we got a little bit of money to do a little pop-up show, “2 Metres to Shakespeare” (Some images below) that me, Rosie, and well, Shakespeare wrote! A little half-hour show we put on in Langthorne Park Amphitheatre, and that was a delight. We squeezed it in during the lightening of restrictions in September, we had beautiful whether…it was lovely.
Then last year we launched properly…I think we were really lucky, the last of the hardcore restrictions were petering out, we were outdoor, socially distanced. We did pretty well in the scheme of things, though I feel a little bad saying that…but it chimed quite well. The whole idea of it it is to create fun joyful, crazy, colourful work.
I observe that no one need ever apologise for those few times when history works with, rather than against your plans!
I turn then to this year’s production, Twelfth Night, and ask how things are going…
It seemed like the obvious choice. We just wanted to build on the idea of giving people fun, and life, and joyfulness. It’s full of song, so much music…it’s also bizarrely on-point with so many cultural references now. There’s so much gender and self-exploration, and also partying! In terms of trying to pull out some contemporary East London cultural references, it chimed again really well!
Boy though, is it a challenge casting a show led by twins! I wouldn’t want to do it again in a rush! Expect some artistic license! We have though, ended up with an amazing cast.
It’s important to us that there’s diverse representation not only in our work, our cast, but in our company teams. We do have a very multi-skilled, diverse cast, we have a comedian, someone who’s a cabaret performer – our first day will be in drag some of the time!
The Festival was due to begin rehearsals when we spoke, a very intense two and a half weeks…
There’s so much to fit in! We’re doing two big numbers, we’re doing one number to Madness, also Duran Duran…there’s a 1980’s twist if you hadn’t noticed!
I observe that outside arts, in almost any discipline, changes the experience immediately for all involved…
Absolutely, I mean that’s been my experience both as an audience member and a performer, it’s like nothing else. I mean one has to take matinees with a pinch of salt. I love them, but they’re bonkers from my experience last year, like kids rolling around the stage. It’s part of the fun, but not quite the magical essence that evening brings. Daytimes are very sweet though, we did flower fairy garden last year, we’re doing party headbands this year…so it really is part of the fun, just different from the evening.
I observe the wonderful family accessibility of the Festival, and the immense impact of seeing theatre at a young age…
That was my youngest memory, seeing performances my mum and dad had made, or were in. It was like nothing else. Now I’ve got two little kids. Last year they came along and did a warm up with the cast, and just the experience of being close to culture is so fantastic. Rosie, my co-director has just had a baby, so now we’re two mums now, and we want to create work that’s available for that. So, we’ve got relaxed performances in the afternoon and people get a cheap ticket to come with free babes in arms. We just want to find any way that we can to make it truly, genuinely accessible and we have heavily reduced school matinees for local schools with a pre-show workshop.
It’s also bringing it to people’s doorsteps…I observe the mammoth relief of nothing having to plan a trip into a busy city centre and we reminisce over school trips to matinees and the multiple heart attacks which must have afflicted the responsible teachers.
I turn then to Shakespeare…
It’s all the big themes which affect us all: love, self-discovery, psychology, war, conflict…and also incredibly funny, though some not as funny as it was when first written of course. Then, speaking as actor-producers, the characters are just all so great, with so much to get your teeth into.
Though Viola is touted as the main part in Twelfth Night, for example, there is such a rich ensemble of amazing roles. I’ve had wonderful experiences…we want to offer that opportunity to actors. We love watching it…it’s just something both Rosie and I share a passion for.
I don’t know what some people think about it, but it’s probably not the purest way to do Shakespeare.
I observe that purity is over-rated, and that generations of schoolkids have been taught a “pure” version of Shakespeare, by carefully plastering over the fulsome ribaldry…
That’s the joy of doing something family friendly, you can play with that…there’s bits we know kids are not gonna get, but there’s plenty they will follow, and we can also offer fun musical numbers, and dance, and then the adults, well you can do the occasional dick joke! I think it’s fun to play the dichotomy, and different levels within Shakespeare.
I ask how the company prioritises its time with such a short rehearsal period…
It has to be the text, and the story. I think hopefully we’re a little bit more experienced now with the structure of it and what needs to happen when. So, we’re doing things like an early music and choreography rehearsal so the actors can get to grips with the ‘numbers’, but it can’t dominate, because got we’ve got to tell the story well. We’ve got to get that across.
We have our wonderful director Scott Le Crass, that’s something he absolutely believes in. Our first week will be almost exclusively focussed on text. Scott’s saying, we might be at a point then to stagger through the whole play, which is insane after a week – although probably what’s needed as the rehearsals are only two and a bit weeks!
Then again there’s something in the nature of the work we’re doing: it’s not meant to be too neat and there’s meant to be a sense of freedom and play. We’re not going to block every single thing. Just the essentials, fun stuff with and on-stage fights, the ‘swords,’ the finale…some stylised sequences, but it’s about trusting your actors to work, and play once on stage.
We may not be the perfect oiled machine, but that’s ok, it’s part of the fun…it doesn’t have to stay in a neat box.
I referred then to a signed performance I witnessed atop Castle Terrace, wherein Dave Anderson took on the role of legendary Scots comedian Chic Murray for Òran Mór’s, “A Funny Place for a Window.” Known for his comedic, and dialect inflected monologues, Murray presented quite the challenge to the signer on the day, fun which was incorporated into the show when Anderson sidled across periodically to check she was ready.
Then there were the occasional utterances so obscure as to defy signing, at which the signer simply offered a well-timed shrug. Far from detracting from the show, these interactions unquestionably increased the joy quotient of the experience for all on stage, and watching it.
I love that! You can acknowledge those challenges, and the audience love it! Obviously not in every performance, but we had kids rolling around on our stage last year, and you simply found ways to work with it.
I finished by asking Ursula’s hopes and vision for the Festival…
Well, we started quite small, only four venues in the first year, and this year we already have eight! So, it’s quite a big step. We’ve expanded into Hackney, so in the short term that’s been the exciting move for us, and something I wanted to do since I was born there. We might continue to spread to some extent, though we don’t know where yet, but we’ll see where it goes.
One of the things I’m hoping to do next is fundraise to launch an ESLF Young Company. We’re in talks with the wonderful people who run the Leighton Great Hall (an ideally appointed venue, once stately home, now wedding and conference venue)…in an ideal world it would be a top-quality enterprise a little like National Youth Theatre, but for Shakespeare. Free places, so hence the fundraising, for 14-25 year olds, who would probably do a Winter/Christmas show. The idea would be for some legacy and longevity, say if two young actors a year were fed into the main company.
Really, we want to create a much more all year-round diet of activities. Eventually it would be wonderful to have the professional company going to Rep, perhaps with some Winter indoor shows going on as well.
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