After the Swan Song: Revolt in Revival  

Scoring this past year of global elections of heads-of-government (2024-2025) have been the sounds of an evolving news media landscape: the slow, dying groan of traditional journalism in print media; the rising whispers of widespread mis- and disinformation in the digital sphere; the cacophony of voices arguing a democratic-yet-populist multiplicity of perspectives on social media; and the haunting, echoing chant of regimes past that warn us of repeating history. In our current moment, in which politicians express their disarmingly-shocking meanings plainly, and in which generations of progress seem to be slipping down the annals of time, one might recall Albert Camus’s post-war retelling of Sisyphus: the man punished by the gods for his defiance of Death, doomed for eternity to push a boulder up a hill, only to have it roll down as it reaches the top. So goes our centuries-long, weary, fervent fight for equality and humanity—slipping past us, undone like an upstart boulder giving way to what seems like a determinable Nature.  

Our international ensemble travels from our respective corners of the world (the United Kingdom, the United States, India, Palestine, Ireland, and the Netherlands), convening in Shakespeare’s hometown with both a volition and a mandate to create new out of Shakespeare’s old. And yet the experience of Shakespearean revival and adaptation bears a strikingly similar disheartening futility to our modern socio-political imperative to resist tyranny. For how tragic is it that Shakespeare’s words, characters, and worlds still seem to be our contemporaries? The forum still falls to rhetoric, the ruler’s self-interest still corrupts both himself and the state, and women’s protest still hangs in the air unanswered. Has society not learnt, or are we doomed cyclically to repeat the past?  

We might realize Camus’s response to political disillusionment and existential despair in the arena of the theatre: to not just accept the world as it is, but to imagine what it could be. Through an absurdist ‘revolt’, we turn over our stance on the established order, and through theatrical ‘revival’, we extend the final page into a new life. And so, after our swan song for democracy rings out, our co-creation between actor and audience of a theatrical reality extends to our world’s stage, and in that reverberating silence, we implore you: act.  

ARUSHI GROVER
Production Dramaturg  

SOURCES  

Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, trans. by Justin O’Brien, 1991 Vintage Books ed. (Librairie Gallimard, 1942).  

FROM THE DIRECTOR 

First and foremost, the Cohort of 24/25 would love to thank all of you for being here today, and for your enthusiasm in our process. We cannot express enough gratitude for everyone who has not only aided us in making our visions become a reality, but for the mentoring and the excitement that have been reciprocated. It truly means a lot, and for that, we are just so extremely grateful. Thank you! 

For those of you who are unaware of the Birmingham process, we have to answer a prompt with a 60 minute (ish) show that the cohort not only devises, but then produces for one night only. Since January, all eleven cohort members have been assigning productions roles, devising, creating, writing and editing a script, designing, casting, and rehearsing. Through the past couple months, we have collectively created what you are about to watch; “The World’s Stage.” This play is about acting president Pierce Marshall, running for reelection, and the nature of public versus private, especially with current journalism and expectations of celebrity. How much of the private life does the public feel owed by these figures? We also wanted to focus on female Shakespearean characters. How do women become collateral in these plays? How do they become casualties? How can we get women to win, and what do we do when we get confronted with the fact that they don’t? 

By taking inspirations from Shakespearean archetypes such as the puppet ruler, domineering mother, complacent daughter, two-faced advisor, fool, silenced woman, and self-serving father— we created characters to examine the modern day political climate. Currently, international governments are redefining what it means to be leaders, and as an international cohort, we have been thinking about modern day figures and institutions, compared to these thirty-seven or so, four-hundred year old plays. Do these characters and comparisons still hold up and remain the same? 

We are asking the audience about the complacency of screens, your screens. You can just change the channel off of a speech you dislike, you can swipe past activist posts on stories, you can choose who to follow and who not to follow. As we look around our world, it is slightly hued from screens, never being its true colors with filters over it. The more intense something gets, the more intense the filter. I ask you to think about control. Who is controlled, and who is controlling. What does a false face to the public look like? Do you know the truth about those you have elected?  Are you just being controlled into complicity? 

AVERY SAAD
Director