Julius Caesar

WHEN IN ROME...

Sport for Jove’s acclaimed Summer Shakespeare Season, now in it’s 8^th successful year, has become a must-see on the NSW theatrical calendar. This year we go on a Roman Holiday – the epic tale of Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, told together in the frenzy and accessibility of the Festival atmosphere, outdoors and full of feasting and invention.

Shakespeare looked to the Roman past not out of historical curiosity but to awaken us to the struggles, fears and possibilities of our present – our relationships to power, to loyalty, to freedom, to violence, to idealism and to civic duty. But above all he turned to the famous characters and events of an ancient age in order to imagine new futures –

“How many ages hence shall this, our lofty scene, be acted over in states unborn and accents yet unknown” Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra are two of his greatest plays – famed for their clarity, political modernity, poetry and their extraordinary pantheon of characters, real men and women who defined the very pulse of their age and who are rekindled in the possibilities of every political leader and every political machination of the 21^st Century. Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Mark Antony, Augustus, Portia, Cassius, Brutus, Agrippa. Their rise and thunderous fall threw down to us a set of challenges we may never master. How do we lead a nation? How do we follow a leader? What sparks revolution? What suppresses it? What price freedom…?

And as the merry-go-round of the Australian Prime Ministership has shown in recent years, politics is as personal as life itself. Love, hate, betrayal, sacrifice, lust, confusion, tyranny – power is a fragile house of cards and every nation stands in its trembling shadow.

Join us outdoors this summer for a rampaging look at Rome’s eternal lessons for our contemporary lives.

PLEASE NOTE

The Leura Shakespeare Festival event is an open-air and all weather event. The performance area and audience seating is completely uncovered. The event is an all-weather experience, and Sport For Jove Theatre Company is committed to going ahead with a performance even in unfavourable weather conditions, unless there is a concern for the general safety of the actors and audience by attending the show. The decision to move a performance indoors can be made up until 30 minutes before the show begins and a cancellation may also be called during the performance. A show is considered to be performed once 60% of it has been staged and it will not be moved indoors if conditions require the remaining portion of the performance outdoors to be cancelled.

Shows need to proceed as scheduled outdoors or indoors as to secure the financial viability of the festival. Festival shows that are moved indoors in 2017 will be relocated to the Wentworth Falls School of Arts location at 217 Great Western Hwy, Wentworth Falls NSW 2782. To accommodate the size of this venue, only a limit of 200 tickets for all outdoor shows will be made available for each performance. For shows that proceed outdoors as scheduled, an additional 30 tickets will be made available for sale on a first come first served basis starting 1 hour before show time.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Leura