We invite you to read along with us for the next few months and participate in an ongoing conversation about the themes and history of Shakespeare’s Othello, what it means to adapt or reimagine that story today, and some context for our summer production of OtÎhêw.
For our inaugural season as collective leadership, we are introducing a new seasonal offering that will take place each year in these late winter months. This event will act as the official launch of our new season and will kick start a series of events which each interrogate the themes we are focusing on for the year.
Our vision for Shakespeare in the Ruff begins with our collective leadership model: five artists from different intersections bringing different perspectives to Shakespeare’s plays, and the great big question of why we (and so many others) keep doing them.
“I started rehearsing Prince Hamlet when my daughter was 7 weeks old” has become something of a badge of honour for me. Pregnant artists ask me about it. New parents marvel at it. I look back at it from where I am now and it seems impossible. But that’s because now things are way harder.
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A small but important thing on our New Leadership To-Do List was to rename Ruff’s levels of giving. The original names, which had been around since the company was founded, had an implicit hierarchy that we wanted to move away from. We’re grateful for any donations, of any size – it’s all equally valuable to us – and we wanted the new names to reflect that. We also wanted to move a little farther away from the Shakespeare part of our name, and a little closer to the Ruff.
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Shakespeare in the Ruff is seeking applications for an Education Coordinator to join the Artistic Leadership Collective and company to guide the Youth Development and Outreach Program, focusing on the Young Ruffian Apprenticeship Program (YRAP). The role of the Education and Outreach Coordinator is to lead with passion, dedication, and a desire to create meaningful and vibrant programming for youth.
The contract runs from February 1st, 2022 to October, 2022 with an increase in activity in March/April and July/August.
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We had the opportunity to officially meet you at the 10th Anniversary Fun(d)raiser back in May but we wanted to take this opportunity to dig a little deeper. Below we answer some of the questions we didn’t get to at the event and re-visit some of our favourites.
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It wasn’t until this year that I truly understood how much Ruff is part of the neighbourhood community. Whenever we would be working in the park, painting, or rehearsing, someone would inevitably come up to us and ask when the show would be.
The great thing about Shakespeare in the Ruff is that anyone can engage with their shows. No matter where they’re at in life, they can come experience some magic for a little while. There’s a sense of openness and of welcoming that even a pandemic couldn’t squash.
We wrote a shakespeare play. A story that is filled with epic-ness, and heartbreak, and poetry, and laughter, and verse, and joy and tragedy. A play that is not an adaptation, or a retelling of shakespeare— because it is shakespeare.