S5: E3: Kerry Frampton on Midsummer Mechanicals, Clowning, and Working-Class Shakespeare Theatre

Kerry Frampton (Splendid Productions) discusses her show Midsummer Mechanicals, Clowning, and the importance Working-Class Shakespeare Theatre.

For a complete episode transcript, click http://www.womenandshakespeare.com

Splendid's Website: https://splendidproductions.co.uk/about/

Interviewer: Varsha Panjwani
Guest: Kerry Frampton
Researcher: Eleanor Goetz 
Producers:  Tino Ngorima, Isis Henderson, Kynnedi Smith
Transcript: Benjamin Poore
Artwork: Wenqi Wan

Suggested Citation:  Frampton, Kerry in conversation with Panjwani, Varsha (2024). Kerry Frampton on Midsummer Mechanicals, Clowning, and Working-Class Shakespeare Theatre [Podcast], Series 5, Ep.3. http://womenandshakespeare.com/

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Email: earlymoderndoc@gmail.com

Transcript

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Varsha: [00:00:00] Hello, dear listeners. Welcome to Women & Shakespeare. I'm your host, Dr. Varsha Panjwani. And some of you know that for the past two years, I have been obsessed with A Midsummer Night's Dream, because I'm writing a new introduction for the Oxford World's Classics edition of this play.

Varsha: So I have been carrying out the part-joyful, and part-awful at times, task of seeing everything related to A Midsummer Night's Dream. This is what led me to see Midsummer Mechanicals – a play that is a sort of sequel to A Midsummer Night's Dream, with the mechanicals or, if you like, the artisans or the workmen, at its centre.

Varsha: I found it a brilliant take on Shakespeare's play, and I loved the way in which it critiqued the [00:01:00] sexual and class politics of Shakespeare's play. And besides that, Midsummer Mechanicals was so joyous. Everyone in that theatre was utterly engaged with the play, from little kiddies to jaded academics.

Varsha: It gave me the spur and the spark that I needed to write about the mechanicals in my introduction. So I knew that I had to talk to the person who co-wrote, co-directed, and played the mechanical Bottom in Midsummer Mechanicals, Kerry Frampton. 

Varsha: Kerry Frampton, our guest for today, is the Artistic Director of Splendid Productions, which produces shows and is also an education company. She's a writer, director, actor, clown, and teacher. Before founding [00:02:00] Splendid, she was a workshop facilitator for English Touring Theatre, and she has a real love for teaching. Splendid therefore offers fantastic resources and workshops alongside its productions.

Varsha: We recorded this podcast in our classroom, at a time when Kerry was researching and developing her new show, Rough Magic, which delighted audiences at the Globe recently. When we were recording, we had all kinds of disruptions thrown at us, from really loud students chatting after an exam, to hand dryers from nearby toilets, to ambulances and motorbike sounds from the windows.

Varsha: Now we have edited these as much as we could, but I wanted to tell you that despite all of this, my students were so engaged with Kerry and referred to her in the sessions that [00:03:00] followed her visit. I hope that you too find much to learn and enjoy in this podcast.

Varsha: Kerry, you are so, so welcome to Women & Shakespeare podcast. I have been obsessed with Midsummer Mechanicals. I'm so glad you're here. 

Kerry: That is so kind. I can't quite believe I'm here. So thank you for inviting me. 

Varsha: When did you first encounter Shakespeare and what was the nature of that encounter? 

Kerry: At my secondary school we didn't do Drama, and in English we were looking at Macbeth and, I'm from a working-class background which is fundamental in everything I do. Like I can't help it, it's just inbuilt.

Kerry: So I never really felt like it was for me or that I was a person who was supposed to get it. It felt like it was very coded and it [00:04:00] favoured anyone who was articulate. It favoured people whose brains worked in a very specific way. Or maybe had a lot of poetry. It felt exclusive to me.

Kerry: But part of that is also because we're not supposed to sit down and read it in a confined way. We're supposed to witness it and experience it and feel it. And in that same year we got taken to our local big theatre. We went to see the RSC version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that had, these kind of punk, rogue fairies. And there was an anarchic, exciting, a sort of bubbling underneath. And I sat there and I was like, Oh, it can be this! It can be this! I felt welcome. I didn't feel like I was excluded from the experience. Sat in that theatre, I genuinely felt a fizz [00:05:00] of pleasure of the storytelling and being part of something bigger than myself.

Kerry: And that feeling, being part of something bigger than myself, also runs through my work. I want audiences to feel like they are not separate, that they are part of a team, that this experience, this one experience, this time that we have shared together is uniquely ours. And will never be repeated.

Varsha: That's why we go to the theatre, don't we? I very much relate to that fizzy experience that you were talking about. I'm glad that this began for you with A Midsummer Night's Dream. It's one of my favourite plays. 

Kerry: It's one of my least favourite plays. 

Varsha: Really?

Kerry: Yeah, I find it classist, I find it sexist. I find it really problematic. [00:06:00] Really, really problematic. And one of my first jobs was being Hermia in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I think it's a tricky play.

Varsha:I think I like the play precisely for the reasons you pointed out. Because it's not so fluffy. It's not so nice. For example, if you try and pass it under the radar, you can. But also, I feel it's profound and asking those questions that need to be asked.

Kerry: Yeah, I think maybe I’d not seen those productions. Because they got to a point where I was like, I cannot see another production of this. So maybe I've just really missed out on the people who've gone, right. Shall we get political with this and shall we address some of this? 

Kerry: But the only people I'm interested in are the mechanicals because I feel so upset on their behalf that they're treated so poorly [00:07:00] by literally everyone. They're like, and they're artists.

Kerry: But my main inspiration really comes from visual art. Folk art. I'm obsessed with folk art. Because this is ordinary people producing the most remarkable work that would never get hung in a gallery, but has so much heart and beauty, and there's kind of roughness around the edges.

Kerry: I think perfection is impossible. Anyone who seeks perfection, you just might as well punch yourself in the face. Because even in nature, there's no perfection. And actually, the things about us and the things about productions that aren't perfect are the things that we can hook into. So, the beauty of folk art is that also very often it's a collective and unlike quite a lot of modern art, it's a collective that's actually acknowledged.

Kerry: So much [00:08:00] of modern art is, it becomes a factory of that person is telling a lot of other people what to do, but none of them ever get any credit. But folk art's like big groups of people like, doing their thing. So in Mechanicals I wanted the mechanicals to be seen as these, these group of makers and artists and people who genuinely use creativity as a way of self-expression, as a way of making things that are genuinely useful.

Kerry: Which always brings me back to, like, why the hell do we do theatre? So very often I'm thinking what theatre is for? And that question is a useful one to keep asking when you're making. Why am I doing this? 

Varsha: I agree completely and I am going to ask you a little bit more about the mechanicals in a moment, but I want to backtrack a bit and ask you [00:09:00] about your company.

Varsha: So you are the Artistic Director of Splendid Productions, which bills itself as a theatre company and an education company. So tell us more about how this twinning works and feeds into each other. 

Kerry: I think if I was rechristening the company, Splendid is a ridiculously arrogant name and I, I didn't really think about it at the time. I set the company up in order to be able to make work that was socially, politically engaged. 

Kerry: Also, so we're 20 years old, so I had a six-, seven-year-old daughter. And it was very difficult to find work that meant I could be creative and raise her.

Kerry: So I had her a week-on, week-off. And the weeks that I didn't have her, I toured. So some of it was also practically like, how can I make money out of what I love? I really, really love teaching. I love facilitating a room. [00:10:00] And I am very passionate about young people asking questions about the world that they are in.

Kerry: Because it benefits a very narrow group of people for young people to be disengaged with the world. So it was the idea of like, how can we create socially engaged theatre that is entertaining and fun and might encourage young people to make their own work. So that idea of not being passive within a system.

Kerry: Like how can we get young people to go, I could write. Like, theatre doesn't have to happen in a theatre. Like I could be making stuff now. Anything that encourages young people to find a way to express their opinions. So, I'm I'm kind of sneaky, really. 

Varsha: So besides being a director, a writer, a designer, you're also a clown. The first one on this podcast. And I think that clowns are extremely important in [00:11:00] Shakespeare. Could you say a bit more about that? 

Kerry: So I'm not an official clown. I don't know how you'd get like an official clown.

Varsha: Yes.

Kerry: So I haven't, I didn't train at one of the French schools. So, I didn't train at Lecoq. I didn't train at Gaulier. I won't suddenly randomly break out into French for you all today. 

Kerry: I think interested in everything outside of the fourth wall. And making work that was very interested in being outside of the fourth wall. So, that would probably be my definition of clown. 

Kerry: So, when I'm mentioning the fourth wall, I mean that invisible wall between actor and audience. Which for me is kind of a weird choice. It's a weird choice so that the audience sit there in the dark pretending that they're [00:12:00] not there while some group of people on the stage are pretending that no one is there apart from them.

Kerry: It's so weird to me. 

Varsha: I agree. 

Kerry: It's so weird and we're all supposed to just go, this is, this is fine. So, I don't understand the idea of getting a group of people in a room together is such an opportunity. 

Kerry: There's something about actors who are looking into the darkness and delivering lines at an audience, which I also find very weird. So when the lights are down for me it's like working blind. Because when the lights are on, it's a dialogue. So I would just would describe Splendid's work as being with an audience.

Kerry: And I think that's what I mean by interested in everything outside of the fourth wall. It means that you can hold a room. Which again is [00:13:00] like facilitation, but in a slightly different way. So, with all of Splendid's work, I don't know if this would have been the case with Shakespeare, that sense of pre-show. That sense of being present with an audience as they come. So you can check in.

Kerry: In clowning it's a sense of tuning in to an audience. Because every single group of people is different and requires something different from you. So if you're tuned in to a room, it means that you can work it. And in general, with clowning, you, your energy, you go just under the room. And then very gently you can take it with you.

Kerry: And there's something about working in a room where you really just have to take a small step back and open out your body. So it's an offer. So the dialogue isn't imposing. It's not at, it's not on. It is present and with. And I think for Shakespeare, that's really important. [00:14:00] So when you ask a question, that potentially that audience could answer or you have to have the sense that there's room for them to answer because these are universal questions.

Kerry: So I think my job as a writer and as a performer and as a maker is to try and find the personal in the universal and the universal in the personal. So how can we find a way to make these stories connect to as many people as possible in that room. I think it's a radical act to connect people in this current society.

Kerry: There are so many ways in which we are encouraged to be separate, or to feel like we have less in common, and I do not believe that to be true. So for me, the idea of bringing a group of people into a room is an opportunity to connect. How can I connect a group of people up here who have paid much less for their tickets than this group of [00:15:00] people here?

Kerry: So financially, how can I make sure that those people at the top of the –hanging on a balcony in – how can I make sure that they feel as connected to what we're doing as the people who have paid the most for their tickets? So there's also that sense of an equity of experience, if possible.

Kerry: So, I think that as well is an important part. It's like, how can we keep everyone, it's like, tiny little golden lassoes. Like, how can we keep everyone in? And also, if you're working present with an audience, I know that that little group there has been a bit disconnected, so how can I connect to that group and then give something for them?

Kerry: And you can see, you basically, with clowning, you warm where the laugh is. And you wouldn't, you don't necessarily warm to the person who's immediately in front of you, which would be easy. You try and warm the person furthest away because between you and them are loads of [00:16:00] people who get to feel a bit of that gold, a little bit of that glow.

Kerry: So it's that, it's like keeping a room present with you so that you can do your job, so you can tell your story and you can take them with you. And these epic Shakespearean stories, like every, every character has something to say to every person at some point, be that a warning, be that a kind of little nugget of wisdom be that a shared, a shared heart sore.

Kerry: Like anything, how can we find these different connections and they're gonna be intellectual, they're gonna be emotional, they're gonna be physical. I think inevitably when we're watching stuff, we want to see ourselves within a story, right? We want to see us or people that we love or people that we know or people who look like us or feel like us, who come from a similar background to us.

Kerry: We want to connect to a story. [00:17:00] And if you can find that in an audience for everyone, that's when we find that universal. And that's when we can get a group of people to look across a room and go, Oh, they feel that way too.

Varsha: I very much felt that way when I was watching Splendid's Midsummer Mechanicals which is, of course, a sort of sequel to A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Kerry: Yes, it's the tricky second album for the Mechanicals. 

Varsha: [Laughs] And I actually saw it at Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare's Globe's indoor playhouse. And you co-wrote the script, and when I saw it, I felt like everyone in the room was together in it. But then when I read the reviews, people were describing it as a kids’ show and I did not understand.

Varsha: So could you tell me, did you aim it [00:18:00] primarily for kids or do you generally make shows that appeal to the full range of humanity? 

Kerry: I think that with all theatre you want to be like, what's the, what's the widest audience? Like the young people who are in the audience is like small, three-year-olds in the audience and babes-in-arms, there is enough there visually. There's so much slapstick in Midsomer Mechanicals. So there's joy in the room. But equally we're writing with a sense of, the Globe audience come with certain expectations.

Kerry: And I think it's very difficult to navigate what people coming into that space want from it. Some people essentially want it to be a museum. 

Varsha: Yes. 

Kerry: A lot of people want it to be a museum. When they go, they want authentic things in a building that is under 30. 

Varsha: Whatever that might mean … 

Kerry: Do you know [00:19:00] what I mean? It's very tricky. That building is like a tiny bit older than my grown child and it's like what you want authentic, yeah, whatever that might be, right? So, there's enough in Mechanicals, we tried to put a little reference in from every play that we could think of, so that if you had an academic in the audience, that they could sit there and have at least one moment where they went, mm hmm.

Kerry: And that's the laugh, and you'd get it. And it'd be like, Yeah, that one's me. And then there's a bit where I get trapped in a door because I have a gigantic ruff on. Funny. So, really, the aim is that there's something for everyone.

Kerry: And I never want people to be excluded from an experience. And I've always got an eye on making work that everyone can access. There's this really lovely quote from a [00:20:00] sculptor called Brâncuși. And he says that simplicity is complexity resolved. And I think that's really important in work. Because sometimes when you're writing for the writers in the room, the writers who are listening, I think sometimes we want to let people know how clever we are.

Kerry: And it's just in the work. So you can hear the writing, and the writing is louder than anything. Because you might as well be going, by the way, I'm exceedingly clever. 

Varsha: I thought that it was as you were saying, complexity simplified. And that is why I think people were miscategorising it as a kids’ show because they understood it and they thought it was simple. But for me, that was the most joyous thing that it felt, it felt very accessible and simple, but it wasn't.

Varsha: It was giving us that entire nuanced, [00:21:00] layered joy but doing it very simply. So I totally got it.

Kerry: Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I'm really glad. I am so, so proud of it. And I would describe it as a family show, in that you can go with anyone and get something from it.

Varsha: Definitely. 

Kerry: But I'm so glad, because the social politics within that piece are really on point. 

Varsha: Yes. 

Kerry: And there is real pleasure, there's a moment in Mechanicals where we have one female character. I play Bottom, so I do quite a lot of drag king work. So people don't know I'm a woman. So by the end, they still might not know I'm a woman. If I'm doing my job well, 

Varsha: I didn't know you were playing Bottom. I saw the whole show, I really enjoyed it, then looked at the bios and the programme and I was like, what? So I didn't realize that it was a woman playing Bottom.

Kerry: [00:22:00] Great. Good. Job done. 

Kerry: And it it's set. It's set in a time when no women are allowed on stage. And we have one woman in it called Patience Snout, the wife of Tom. And she's there the whole way through the first half. And we find out by the end of the first half that Tom isn't coming, that we only have three out of six actors.

Kerry: And she, Patience Snout, is going to go on stage for the second half, which is the show. And the men, me being one of them, are just so, so women don't act, women can't act, women shouldn't be on stage. And the children in the audience are so incandescent with rage at the men on stage. And so one of my favourite, favourite things is there'd be a bit, and it's Oh, it's outrageous – women can't act. That it's just this kind of just, blatant [00:23:00] misogyny.

Kerry: And you've got these tiny children standing up in the audience just like, you are wrong. And they're shouting at us. We've got little boys and little girls, furious at the sexism – honestly, it just gives you such hope – and there would be chants of ‘Patience, Patience’.

Kerry: So when I wrote the role, so I'm 50 this year and I wrote it for a menopausal woman. I wrote it for my friend Mel La Barrie, who's a Trinidadian woman, who's a tiny bit younger than me, but I wrote it for her because she's a force of nature. 

Kerry: And she is a remarkable person, but she also – space is political, how we hold space, who takes it, who doesn't, emotionally, mentally, physically. And Mel can stand in the middle of the space and she can hold it without blinking. She's remarkable. I'm interested also in what people think power [00:24:00] looks like and sounds like.

Kerry: So I wrote this role for her, but she was rightly going to Broadway with & Juliet being Nurse, so fair. Fair. But, so we found the excellent Melody Brown to do it. And she's Japanese heritage and she's mid-fifties. And she takes sarcasm and dryness to a whole new level. And all the way through, it's designed to show you that she is the most accomplished person in the whole thing, throughout the whole thing.

Kerry: And she's the heart of the piece. So I wanted to write something where there is a ridiculously capable older woman entirely just nailing it from beginning to end. And being completely ignored then by the final scene, the final moment, she has this speech.

Kerry: And she talks about never letting anyone tell you that you can't do [00:25:00] something that you're very, very capable of doing. And I believe that everyone has had a moment where they have been underestimated for some reason, in some way. And the amount of whooping happening in that moment. And again, it's like a small thing, but it's a small thing that matters.

Varsha: No, you are right. I think Patience Snout did sarcasm so well right from the get-go, because she comes in, she tells us to make some bunting and hang the bunting.

Varsha: And as we were doing it, we were told that this is a voluntary position, you won't be paid for it. And we were like, okay. And yes, the absolute joy that erupted in the children when she does finally do what she's been told not to do act on stage was just ridiculously happy-making. 

Kerry: And the audience are part of the show, so when they come in, they're the village. So our job in the pre-show is to connect [00:26:00] everyone. So we encourage people to share their snacks. If there's someone would who's bought crisps or sweets.

Kerry: It's oh, there's Mike. He's got the snacks for this area. Just pass them round. We've got anyone who's come with a magnificent beard. We had these three ridiculous beards on one day. Huge beards. And it was like, Oh! Oh, you've come for the beard competition. How did it go? And then you could connect this person with this person and this person, three beards.

Kerry: And so it's like, how do we connect this room of strangers so that by the end they feel like they are a community?

Varsha: Yeah. And, and manage something together. So that was, that was really cool. 

Kerry: Yeah. They help us, the audience help us by the end.

Kerry: There's no way that we could stage it. They’re our fifth character. So they do all the sound effects and they, yeah, yeah. 

Varsha: And you've talked about mechanicals and how you [00:27:00] think about them as absolutely artisans and working-class people. And I think in Shakespeare's play too, there's a, the reason why they're so popular is there's something very touching about how well they want to do their job. Is that what interested you in the mechanicals’ story? Why were you drawn to it? 

Kerry: I think that I was drawn to it because they're treated so poorly. And the mocking of them and their efforts. I wanted them to have a whole show that was just theirs, where they're not being undermined, they're not being mocked, they're doing a really good job.

Kerry: They're just doing a really good job and they're making something beautiful. And we also managed to hire an entirely working-class cast. So there's real love of those people. There's real love and we're not, there's no punching down.

Kerry: There's [00:28:00] no punching up. There's no punching. There's kind of criticism of the inherent patriarchal nature of the structure that it was written within. But that is entirely mocked. We mock the space. 

Varsha: Yes. 

Kerry: The ludicrousness of the performing space. Everything is sort of, is gently kind of pushed, nudged.

Varsha: And I want to ask you about Bottom specifically because it's such a rich role though, even in Shakespeare as well. So many actors have played it. Bottom has enjoyed spin offs. Did you watch any of those performances? Read Spinoffs as you wrote and rehearsed the part? I found your performance hilarious and heartbreaking. So what was your understanding of Bottom, in Shakespeare's play as well as yours? 

Kerry: So for me, I just, [00:29:00] I think that he just wants to, he just loves it so much that he spills out. I think he just loves it so much and, like he would have ADHD, right? Because he can only deal with what's immediately, the feeling that's immediately in front of him. Which is, oh, you can't, I could, I could do that. And I don't think it comes from arrogance or swagger. I just think he loves it. I just think he loves it so much.

Kerry: So I read anything I could lay my hands on that him. But in the, in the show I did straight out of uni, Edward Bond, R. I. P. Edward Bond had written us this extra little piece called Bottom’s Dream. And I know there are other versions of Bottoms Dream. So it was Edward Bond had written this company in Cambridge, a very sort of specific Bottom-based version for primary schools.

Kerry: Right. And he came to watch us do this. And he, [00:30:00] afterwards he looked very sad in the audience, rightly so. It was not good what we did. And afterwards he just shook his head very, very gently and went, it's not working, is it? He was right. It was really bad. That's my Edward Bond story. He was immensely disappointed by the performance that we did of his work.

Kerry: So we sort of did that. I just got a lot of warmth in for Bottom. I've seen some versions. So the version, the RSC version that I saw when I was a child, when I was 14, 15, was David Troughton, who did like a marvelous job. And my good friend, Sophie Russell, saw her doing Bottom at the Globe.

Kerry: And I don't know if you have any reference point for this, but there is a program on Channel 4 in the UK called Great Pottery Throw Down. It is a pottery show and there is a guy who runs it who's a kind of chief potter [00:31:00] and he's called Keith and on a weekly basis he is moved to tears by people's work and efforts. And I channeled him, so we wrote that into it.

Kerry: So every now and then Bottom from Mechanicals, he just tears up and says, I love weaving me. I love it. So it's the idea that he's just moved by it. Moved by his friends, just the idea that it would be this kind of alpha person who just loved it. So I always try and read as much as I can and then mostly in order to know what it isn't. It's the kind of via negativa approach: by knowing what it is not, we more closely know what it is.

Kerry: So I think the more that you can read and watch and look, the more you can find your version of what it is that you want to do. I think mostly I didn't want to make him a bully. 

Kerry: [00:32:00] I wanted him to be someone with a really big heart, but not necessarily very much social awareness. Yeah, that more than anything. And for him to feel things strongly. 

Varsha: Yes, which is out of fashion. And I can see how much I connected because feeling something so strongly that he was spilling out is so out of fashion. So I felt really so much for Bottom. He loves it all. 

Kerry: Oh, he loves it. He loves his village. He loves his friends. He loves all of the things. He just wants to do a good job. It's just there isn't always the right moment. 

Varsha: Yes. Brilliant. I also love the use of songs in Splendid Productions and in Midsummer Mechanicals specifically, the ‘On We Go Together’ song [00:33:00] was just so poignant. Tell us about why you incorporate songs in your plays.

Kerry: Because predominantly Splendid, when we're, when we're not making work at the Globe, which is a new thing that's the last three years, we work with 14- to 21-year-olds. And, theatre can be boring. So, we always have at least three songs. One near the beginning, one in the middle, and one at the end.

Kerry: Music changes how we feel. In our own work, in Splendid's work, we use it to smuggle politics. So we've got a Bouffon version of Macbeth, literally told by a group of idiots. And every murder is done in song. So we have a song called ‘Regicide’, after the Which is a handbell song, there's six handbells that are tuned. And it's called ‘Regicide’.

Kerry: And then there's a song about Banquo [00:34:00] being murdered. Which sounds kind of, clippity clops. So yeah, every murder is replaced by a song and you can kind of smuggle politics and music so you can be laughing at something and Splendid we call it tickle and slap.

Kerry: Not that we're not doing that with our young audience, but that sense of an audience being overjoyed and then laughing and then going, sorry, did I just laugh at that? What exactly, just working out what they're laughing at. So and with the ‘On We Go Together’ song, it comes in early.

Kerry: And the first thing that Bottom does is he says to the audience, Oh, you've probably heard this around the village, so you can just join in. And then the audience are like, Oh, okay. But within about, I don't know, like 30 seconds, there's a chorus that they're singing along with because it's very straightforward. And then we split the audience in half and each half gets a different call response. And they get, they get really happy. People just want to feel part of [00:35:00] something.

Varsha: Well, you don't have to convince me about songs. I'm Indian, Bollywood…

Kerry: Culturally, it's so important, like music is so fundamental and the sharing of stories and the sharing and the joy of folk music.

Varsha: Talking about the Globe and talking about Macbeth and Regicide songs brings me to Rough Magic, which I am very excited about, which is happening in the Globe's indoor playhouse again. So could you tell us a little bit more about it? And the publicity that I've read so far says that it's about Macbeth's wonderfully wayward, weird sisters. So could you tell us why you've centered them here? 

Kerry: I love the idea of doing something specifically spooky. Because children quite like that feeling of on the edge of being a bit like afraid or a bit that's exciting.

Kerry: So the [00:36:00] witches are, so this one is centered around the youngest witch, who's a witch in training. So there's Nona, the youngest witch, and her two aunties. Auntie Morai, who's by the book and business. Auntie Audeja, who probably would rather be at home, like tending a vegetable patch, making special teas, knitting.

Kerry: And it's the year after the Macbeth incident. And it was Nona’s first trip out into the field to work with the humans, and she wasn't supposed to tell Macbeth that he was going to be king.

Varsha: Oh…

Kerry: So it's the supernatural world, they’re basically managing the human world. So they go in and they cast little spells. If people have to meet, like Romeo and Juliet, there would have been like a spell in that moment to make sure that they locked eyes that would have been a fairy’s job. Witches deal with more kind of important things.

Kerry: But because it's Nona’s first [00:37:00] job, they're like, okay, we'll go. But you're not to say anything. 

Varsha: Oh, and she does. 

Kerry: And she does, and it basically really unravels. And as it unravels, we see that Banquo's ghost is sent in. And he loses the power of speech, so all he can do is make a weird sound and shake his gory locks.

Kerry: So that doesn't work. They send in the Shadow, who's specifically in charge of visions. So he decided to use a dagger, because he thought it would be a really good warning. So, they manipulate a dagger to put Macbeth off. And maybe Macbeth might like to go and then just cuddle his lovely wife and go back to sleep. But then he uses a dagger to kill Duncan, 

Kerry: So it's about that world. So it's a supernatural world and how they manage the human world. And the three witches are our story through it. And at the end of the first half, a human invades the supernatural world [00:38:00] and wants his destiny rewritten.

Kerry: And this is Henry IX, the illegitimate son of Henry VIII. And he's got a staff that's bound in the middle because it's been broken in two. That he found on an island and dug up. Prospero’s staff. Yeah, so it's a human invading the supernatural world. No magic can touch him because he's got this staff.

Kerry: And so they have to use rough magic. 

Varsha: Ah, I see.

Kerry: And they have to Macbeth him in order to get rid of him. I wish there was an easier way of explaining that, the whole premise and working on ways of making it simpler in my mind. It's not quite so straightforward as Mechanicals, which is like the year after Pyramus and Thisbe, they make another show.

Kerry: That's like really, really simple. This one's okay. But again, it's joyous and foolish and got a cast of four women. And we're, [00:39:00] just R& Ding at the moment and there's going to be lots of illusions, which we're really excited about. And Nona this time, Nona, who's the youngest witch, she's the heart of the beast.

Kerry: She's like Greta Thunberg for the supernatural world. So it's very institutionalised and very ancient and it's like a set way of doing things. And she is, there are other ways. And by the end, she will obviously triumph. 

Kerry: Because she'll end up with the best ideas and the most power. And that sense of – maybe there is – we don't have to do things the same way as we've always done them, because that's just how we've always done them. I can't think of how that could possibly be relevant to our current society or institutions, right? 

Varsha: And I'm glad that you're doing it all with Shakespeare because Shakespeare, again, is such a big kind of institutionalised entity with so much cultural [00:40:00] power. But I'm already rooting for Nona because I love the sound of her. 

Kerry: She's really cool. 

Varsha: Yep. I love Greta. I love Splendid. So what's not to like? So we're very, very excited about that show. And Kerry, thank you so much for sharing everything with us today. We really, really enjoyed it. 

Varsha: That was Kerry Frampton, talking about Midsummer Mechanicals, Rough Magic, and the importance and practice of engaging young people with theatre. With that, I bid you adieu, adieu, adieu. But remember to tune in to Women & Shakespeare, streaming at Apple Podcasts and Spotify and wherever else you listen to your podcasts.

Varsha: If you want to listen to the podcast with a full transcript, head over to our website, www.womenandshakespeare.com. [00:41:00] Until then, keep smashing the patriarchy.