School of the Arts production of Shakespeare’s Henry V has a modern message
[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/henryv_3.jpg” caption=”Christine McCleod and Marco Difronzo perform in Peter Cockett’s Henry V.”]A stark image of modern day warfare in the Toronto Star led McMaster theatre and film studies professor, Peter Cockett, on an unexpected creative journey. This Friday, the results of that journey will be revealed when Cockett's own version of Shakespeare's Henry V opens in the Robinson Memorial Theatre.
Below the caption “Band of Brothers,” the newspaper photograph depicted a group of U.S. soldiers walking through the bombed-out streets of Falluja. His attention caught by this reference to the most famous speech in Henry V and the image's juxtaposition of the destructive consequences of war and the heroic depiction of the soldiers, Cockett realized the connections that could be made between Shakespeare's 1599 play and modern day concepts of war.
His vision has now crystallized into a post-modern version of Shakespeare's original, with approximately 50 students involved in the production. Says Cockett, “My motivation for the play was partly due to what is going on right now with Iraq, but it's more generally a parable that allows us to explore war, gender, power, violence: the politics of war.”
While Shakespeare's play valorizes war leaders and militarism, Cockett wanted to explore the true nature of battle by moving beyond that core message and digging deeper into Shakespeare's own words to find an alternate meaning. What he found was a disparity between the way war is presented to us and the reality of the cost of human lives.
As director, Cockett has chosen to have five different people portray Henry to expose the complexities of war politics. “What happens on stage is you get one actor playing the protagonist and the audience gets seduced by [the character]; we get pulled into the habit of siding with the protagonist. One of the ways I want to unsettle that is by having five different people play Henry so you never get attached to the same person. Henry's changing all the time so it makes you think about what Henry is and how he's constructed,” says Cockett.
When the play opens on November 18, Cockett hopes that it will raise more questions than give answers. “I didn't want to just put on a play, I wanted to actually engage the community in a debate,” he says. “This is not Shakespeare's production, it's our production.”
Viewers are warned that the play contains harsh language and graphic violence. Tickets are $10 for students and $20 for general admission. Visit www.henry-v.ca for more information on tickets and show times.
