Reputation Reputation Reputation

In a little over 6 hours Upstart will be opening its second-ever production. The strangest thing for me is that I won't be acting in it. Due to my commitments with Cry Havoc (which has since become one of the shows I'm most proud of being involved with) I stood aside from performance duties in 'Othello' and confined myself to promotion/FOH duties. And now here I am in unfamiliar territory watching the final dress rehearsals from the audience POV. It's definitely a different world on the other side of the stage. 12 months ago we were in mad preparations for 'The Taming of the Shrew'. I say mad, because none of us had ever done anything like this before. 'A self-funded free Shakespeare performance on an outdoor stage in a suburb that, for most people, is miles from anywhere?! Are we mad?!' And of course the answer was... yes. But we got it right. The show was a hit, we were all able to breathe a sigh of relief, and preparations for our next season were under way. Back in the very beginning it had been in our heads to do 'Othello' first, but we decided 'Shrew' would be the safer choice, as it would be by far the easier show to produce. 'Othello', however, was never far from our minds. And in our minds, there was only one choice to play the man himself: Mr Eddie Stowers. Watching Eddie go through his paces last night was a thrilling experience. His power, his charisma, his sheer stage-presence makes for compelling viewing. He conveys Othello's journey with dignity and strength. And he's not alone. We've been lucky enough to assemble an extremely talented cast with not one weak link in the chain. This is definitely a show I'll be happy to watch again and again. And so, we hope, will the audiences. Last year we asked ourselves, 'Will they come?' This year we're asking, 'Will they come back? We've proved we can put on a successful comedy. Can we pull off a successful tragedy?' The thing about this show is that there's a great deal of fun to be had. We have singing and dancing. We have sword fights and knife play (choreographed by the singular Mr Andy Fraser). We have live musicians playing authentic middle-eastern instruments. We even have puppetry. Yes, you read right, PUPPETRY. How the hell do you fit puppetry into 'Othello' you may ask? Well I'm not giving anything away, you'll have to see the show for yourself ;) Come on down to Ellenbrook folks (or head out to Elmar's for tomorrow's one-off), and spend the night under the stars watching 'Othello'. It's an experience you won't want to miss. Cheers, Freddie