One Hour Theatre Company, in partnership with Edge Hill University’s company-in-residence, Tenderfoot TC (www.tenderfoottheatre.co.uk), staged a rehearsed, script-development reading of Tim Prentki’s third play in OHTC’s Encounters with Shakespeare series, Empire’s Edge, or, What You Will (22 April 2024, The Winter Gardens, Liverpool 8; https://www.granby4streetsclt.co.uk/granby-winter-garden).
Prentki’s Half Measures, drawing on scenes from Measure for Measure, explored questions of power, sex and illegal working against a background of Russia’s incipient invasion of Ukraine and the glamour of association with Liverpool FC. Lear in Brexitland took up Shakespeare’s exploration of identity and morality by investigating what it means to be English in post-Brexit, contemporary Britain. In Empire’s Edge the focus shifts to vexed issues surrounding migration, interleaving one displaced African woman’s story with fragments from Twelfth Night, Richard II, and some sonnets in order to play with the sharp resonances of Viola’s question: ‘What country, friends, is this?’
The purpose of the public reading was to enable Prentki and Victor Merriman (dramaturg and director) to assess the draft script’s interaction with complex feelings about migration in Britain now. Alongside a contemporary story of human displacement, the play foregrounds ways in which such narratives are mediated, projected, and politicised. Following Twelfth Night, Empire’s Edge revisits Shakespeare’s playful questioning of what happens when sexual desire and power collide. OHTC plays are designed to stimulate live, public, deliberation around subjects of current significance, thereby asserting theatre’s ancient role of turning statements into questions, and providing an all-too-rare forum for live exploration of ideas and their consequences.
