Featured Play

Untaming

At the end of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, after Petruchio and Katherine wed, several days pass where Katherine is “tamed”, the events of which are somewhat unclear beyond her lack of sleep and food. What happened in that time? How does a woman so widely known as an independent, tempestuous “shrew” come to make a speech advising women to obey their husbands at all costs? Untaming reimagines several of Shakespeare’s classic tales from a female perspective, beginning with Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew in the days following her wedding, at Petruchio’s country house. Suffering from lack of sleep and food, Katherine is visited by several ghosts from Shakespeare’s other plays: Desdemona (Othello), Rosaline (Romeo and Juliet), Ophelia (Hamlet), Lavinia (Titus Andronicus) and Cordelia (King Lear), intent on teaching her the secrets to wifely survival. As they re-tell these stories from their own perspective, a group of 21st century students studying them begin to protest the injustice faced by women in Shakespeare’s works. Untaming explores the intersection of past and present, fiction and reality, questions what should be taught in today’s classrooms and sheds light on the voices that have been historically silenced. NB: Untaming was commissioned by Lady Eleanor Holles School for their Write the Girl programme - I retain all the rights.

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