About Shakespeare Republic
Created by Australian actor, Sally McLean in 2015, Shakespeare Republic is an internationally award-winning, female-led and culturally diverse anthology series produced by Incognita Enterprises that celebrates not just the world’s greatest playwright, but also his insightful understanding of the big issues of his time. Insights that still hold relevance today and form the basis for a truly diverse, inventive and epic journey into the nature of being human.
Built on the premise of taking a selection of Shakespeare texts and making them more accessible to modern audiences by setting each piece in a contemporary situation, while playing with gender and embracing diversity, our first award-winning season in 2015 included Hamlet as Media Advisor to a Government Minister, Juliet as one half of a same-sex couple in a Skype conversation, Phebe as an entitled Gen Y drunk texting, Macbeth as a politician about to metaphorically knife an opponent, a female Hamlet weary from the corporate cut and thrust and a performance of Sonnet 18 as a eulogy.
In 2017 we returned with Season Two with thirteen more episodes with everything from Viola as inner-Melbourne hipster to Jaques as a melancholic barfly to Katherina as an ambitious politician’s wife to Henry V as a member of a laser strike team – and everything in-between!
Brainchild of award-winning Director/Producer, Sally McLean, with a highly experienced crew carrying a combined total of over 170 professional credits to their names, Shakespeare Republic has now been officially selected for over 80 international film festivals, nominated over 70 times and won over 30 awards to date, and is an innovative and exciting ride through the works of William Shakespeare, featuring an international cast and a lot of love for the Bard.
We have recently delved into the world of film, producing our first commissioned short film project Speaking Daggers, co-produced with Independent Schools Victoria for the inaugual Arts Learning Festival in Melbourne, which has now won three awards on the international film festival circuit and been officially selected by twenty one festivals. It will be used as part of the curriculum in Victorian schools as a tool to teach Shakespeare to students and teachers alike from mid 2020.
Shakespeare Republic creator/director, Sally McLean is now also faculty at the renowned Howard Fine Acting Studio Australia as their resident Shakespeare teacher and her first published work on Shakespeare, an essay exploring her methodology behind Shakespeare Republic and Shakespeare performance in general, will be published in the UK by Routledge Press in mid 2020 as part of the academic collection, Playfulness In Shakespearean Adaptations edited by Marina Gerzić (The University of Western Australia) and Aidan Norrie (Warwick University, UK).
Next on our creative agenda is our mini-series, Dark Arcadia and Season Three of the main series, which is in final development and takes the work in a different direction again, still maintaining the female perspective and the modern settings and remaining unbound by gender or race.
For more about the series, visit the official site here: http://www.shakespearerepublic.com