Triple Olivier Award-winning West End play EMILIA on its way to Canberra
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From the West End to Canberra, the ground-breaking triple Olivier Award-winning stage show EMILIA will perform at Canberra Theatre Centre in December.
Inspired by 17th-century poet and revolutionist Emilia Bassano – the speculated ‘Dark Lady’ of Shakespeare’s sonnets – this highly lauded show, written by British playwright Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, features an all-female creative team and cast from diverse cultural backgrounds.
This powerful historical drama—one that unapologetically champions all women—sees Manali Datar, Cessalee Stovall and Lisa Maza each take on the role of Emilia.
It’s 1609. Emilia Bassano is a writer, wife, lover, mother, and muse. All she wanted was her voice to be heard. Could she have been the ‘Dark Lady’ of Shakespeare’s sonnets? What about her own poems? Why was her story erased from history? Emilia and her sisters reach out to audiences across the centuries with passion, fury, laughter and song as they inspire and unite to celebrate women’s voices through the story of this trailblazing, forgotten woman.
More than 400 years later, women are still faced with sexism, inequality and harassment. In recent times where the #MeToo movement and Roe vs Wade have been most prevalent, it seems that times are not evolving fast enough. This theatre piece shows that all women are Emilia, that they must stand up alongside her and be counted.
Fierce and provocative, EMILIA is the perfect mix of comedy and fury; a rollicking ride that takes audiences on an exuberant and moving journey though love, loss, identity, ambition, power, rebellion and what it is to be a woman in a man’s world.
Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, EMILIA playwright, says the production has opened up important conversations about whose stories we tell and how we tell them.
“It was created in the midst of Me Too and the bravery of all the women speaking out fuelled us. I wish I could say things have changed for the better since then, but it honestly feels like things have been getting even worse. So perhaps we need this show, and others like it, even more.
“It will mean all sorts of new things now and the Australian production will have very different resonance to the UK one, and this is exactly what the team who created it hoped for. As Emilia says: ‘Take the fire as your own… we want you to, we need you to’.”
Essential Theatre Producers, Amanda LaBonté and Sophie Lampel, were spurred to bring EMILIA to Australiana after hearing its final speech on a podcast.
“We had been looking for that special something to mark the milestone of our 20th anniversary and couldn’t believe how beautifully this play aligned with us; being a female-led company and having spent the last 20 years exploring Shakespeare through a female lens. We knew we had to present this in Australia … Then, COVID. But two-and-a-half years later we are now poised to deliver EMILIA and we cannot be more excited.”
In 2020, EMILIA won three Olivier Awards including Best Entertainment or Comedy Play, Best Costume Design and Best Sound Design.
Gather your crew and put EMELIA in your summer diary–sounds like on not to be missed!
