Shakespeare in the 21st century

William Shakespeare: The bard of Avon; Entertaining, inventive and an influential storyteller.

 

The brief was to “bring Shakespeare into the 21st Century” Choose a play, run with it, work with it and make something with meaning and feeling. In order to bring any piece of design that I create to life it needs to spark interest, have solid content and to be inspiring. I need to immerse myself fully in the story.

 

 

My Shakespeare choice was the comedy “The Merchant Of Venice” Why? Upon reading the reviews, I found it very intriguing, intense, multi woven, complex, completely bonkers and yet it somehow unfolded with such simplicity and made some sort of sense in the end? What a mixture! I could not ignore a story with such meaty content. After reading the play and watching the film I felt compelled to go to West London’s ‘Little Venice’ in Paddington with my camera and see what I could find to be inspired to create a contemporary Shakespeare narrative.

 

 

Fuelled by the story, I found the areas of Portobello and Paddington to be equally rich with inspiring content; the canal, the buildings, shop windows, Moroccan motifs and the people. I decided to base my 21st century version right here in ‘Little Venice.’ I found that the storyline and design ideas were beginning to form…