The youth section of the Gore Repertory Society have been rehearsing two comedic plays, one a fresh take on Macbeth and the other in the style of The Bachelorette with Shakespeare’s tragic heroes and heroines as contestants.
Maruawai College drama teacher and the plays’ director Sarah le Roux said she hoped by putting on a play with teenage actors it would attract a younger audience to the theatre.
"I thought it’d be really nice to bring more young people into the realm of the Little Theatre, because I don’t think they’ve had young people in this theatre for quite some time," she said.
Ms le Roux said children could be more drawn to seeing their friends in a play and it might ignite an interest in theatre-going for them for years to come.
She said she could see the positive effect acting and being part of a production was having on the young thespians.
Acting built the youths’ confidence, she said, and as they learned to play a character that was separate from themselves, they were taken out of some of their own day-to-day shyness.
The students were able to get both a sense of "silliness" and "belonging" from the rehearsals, which helped them to be more lucid and creative, she said.
"I am a drama teacher, and often kids are told not to take it as a senior subject, because it’s not important enough, and actually, I think it builds a whole lot of skills," she said.
Ms le Roux has chosen two plays written by the Canadian company Theatre Folk, which specialises in plays for young people.
The fresh take on Macbeth was titled M...Beth due to the well-known superstition of not saying the name of the Scottish Play out loud, for fear of bad luck.
A spin on the Shakespeare classic it featured smartphones, Youtube streamers and lots of witty one-liners.
Ms le Roux was pleasantly surprised by the level of enthusiasm still held by Gore’s rangatahi for theatre.
Ms le Roux commented on the full cast’s eagerness to stand in for one another and input their own ideas.
"This is a great safe place to try and get things wrong," she said.
The cast ranges from year 8 to 12 and includes students from Blue Mountain, St Peter’s and Maruawai colleges, as well as a couple of home-schooled students.
The two plays, M...Beth and Shakespeare’s Bachelorette will be running from May 7 at The Little Theatre.
"Gore has fantastic facilities and for us to have two full theatres working is amazing," she said.
