11:20am Sunday 14th March 2010
By Lucie Richards
BASINGSTOKE is getting the Shakespeare treatment in a community project that aims to bring the town’s ethnic minorities together.
Leigh Johnstone is a young director, actor and playwright who has big plans in the form of a multi-cultural drama project called Much Ado About Basingstoke.
The 21-year-old, who is a drama student studying at The University of Winchester, will shortly be launching an initiative to get local groups looking at the bard’s plays and how they are relevant in today’s culturally diverse society. Through it, Johnstone, who is originally from Kent, hopes to encourage comm-unity cohesion through drama.
He said: “By using stories and tales from local communities, such as Muslim, Sikh, Chinese and Polish to make the texts contemporary, the project will look at identity and what it means to be of an ethnic minority today in the UK.
“It will also help highlight how Shakespeare ‘belongs to the world’ and this will hopefully be a long-running project that will coincide with The World Shakespeare Festival in 2012, which is part of the Cultural Olympiad.”
Johnstone is running the project with Basingstoke-based Fluid Motion Theatre Company, of which he is artistic director, and he also chose Basingstoke because of the town’s ethnic community and supportive council.
He is contacting various Basingstoke community groups and working with the Bambui UK Development Association (BUKDA) – which support Bambui people living in the UK and are based in Basingstoke.
He plans to launch the scheme in May with regular workshops leading up to performances towards the end of 2010.
The project involves drama students from The University of Winchester as well as theatre professionals, and Johnstone is looking for Basing-stoke residents aged 16 and over from any background to take part in the project.
Anyone interested can write to fluidmotion theatre@google mail.com, or call 07935680209.
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