- The Blind Cupid Shakespeare Company and Quarantine Kids Storytime Partner in Producing a Series of Shakespeare Inspired Audio Dramas
The Blind Cupid Shakespeare Company is excited to announce a new partnership with Quarantine Kids Storytime to produce short form audio dramas of Shakespeare’s plays. This collaboration aims to deliver classical content made accessible to young audiences and those new to the Bard. Each play will be performed by a talented array of international actors.
The stories presented are adaptations by Charles and Mary Lamb, as Quarantine Kids’s founder Sascha Cooper stated: “This is the perfect opportunity to showcase how Charles and Mary Lamb not only made these plays accessible, but also strip down the most complicated plots to make them easier to follow and understand.”
Beginning April 10th, two plays will be released each weekend, on Saturdays and Sundays at 2pm GMT respectively, running for 10 weeks until June 13th. The audio dramas will be available to stream via Quarantine Kids Storytime’s YouTube Channel. In the hope of reaching as many audiences as possible, and making Shakespeare’s work accessible, the content will be available to listeners for free. For those who can afford to, an eventbrite will be available where donations will be encouraged and gratefully received. The funds will go directly to the companies and the actors, all of whom have been struck by the effects of the pandemic and theatres shutdown.
In a moment of solitude and isolation, the project aims to enable the listeners to travel beyond borders with the help of their imaginations through the words of the most famous of storytellers. The poster emulates the idea of a subway station: each train stop corresponds to a play based in a different country, for the Blind Cupid Team believe,“If we can’t travel physically, then art will have to carry us.”
The audiobooks will feature the actors:
Rosalind Blessed, Jack Chandler, Sascha Cooper, Claire Coull,Alice J Crouch, Reuben Beau Davies, Seerche Devereaux, Marc Di Francesco, Christine Hepworth-James, Christine Hounslow, Phill Humphries, Anne-Lise Kadri, Sidney Kean, Frances Knight, Elize Layton, Fritz Leonard, Alice Lussiana Parente, Chris Pybus, Andrea Rose, Joe Staton, JT Stocks.
The editing will be curated by Jack Chandler and the graphics by Alexander Kireev.
About the Teams:
The Blind Cupid Shakespeare Company is a multinational and neuro-diverse group of creative artists who aim to bring fresh, inclusive, collaborative, empowering classical theatre to international communities to encourage continued relationships across borders and backgrounds, reaffirming that theatre connects people from all walks of life, and belongs to everyone.
The company aims to bring its first full scale production to the Costa Blanca of Spain, which due to the pandemic has been delayed, but watch this space as they are working hard and fast to make things possible. In the meantime, they launched with their first production in February, the ‘Alls Well As it Ends Well’ Valentines Showcase’, which is now available to watch on YouTube. For more information visit www.blincupidshakespearecompany.com
The BCSC team includes: Joe Staton (Artistic Director), JT Stocks (Managing Director), Alice Lussiana Parente (Executive Producer), Elize Layton (Project Development) , Frances Knight (Social Media Manager).
Quarantine Kids Storytime was set up in 2020 as an online community project by Alice J Crouch and Sascha Cooper (Crimson Horse Theatre) in order to entertain children, families and those young at heart through these uncertain times, with the power of reading books. Based in Brighton, they slowly built a reading team, consisting of professional actors, teachers and mental health specialists who give their time to the cause.
“This project is a way of saying thank you to our wonderful team for giving the time they have, so please donate to help us develop further projects and support our actors.” says Cooper.
Check out and Subscribe to the YouTube channel to see all their stories and to listen to the audio dramas https://youtube.com/c/QuarantineKidsStorytime
Head here to donation link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/tales-of-shakespeare-by-charles-and-mary-lamb-audio-book-series-tickets-147799194369?fbclid=IwAR2uVMDyEeG9vm_rfWbjKaDSdt2KNFx6bur7TX5GAqMw853CXYTMh_cTNas
