HARLOTS (NWF Reading)

21 October 2024 8:15PM Old Fitz, 129 Dowling St, NSW, Australia. A$0.00

“In an underground refuge Shakespeare’s wronged women lie in waiting, dead to the world above, tending to wounds inflicted by man. When it’s deemed safe will they return to the land of the living, into the hands of their reformed husbands. Hermione has waited sixteen years. Hero hopes her stay won’t be quite as long. Helena has different plans altogether.”

Note: this a free staged reading presented as part of the Fitz’s inaugural New Works Festival.

In Shakespeare's beloved Much Ado About Nothing, the Friar concocts a plan to appease Hero's furious uncle after she is accused of infidelity at her wedding. In The Winter's Tale, Hermione supposedly dies offstage during a public trial for adultery, accused by her husband and King. Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream loves Demetrius. She was set to marry him, but then his love turned. Thanks to fairy magic, the couple end the play married, but it's hard to see their story having a truly happy ending...

The origin of Harlots is the gap left by Shakespeare in what happens to Hermione and Hero when they are forced into hiding, wrongfully accused and forced to disappear from society and feign death. Why? Because a woman's value can only be realised in losing her.

Harlots brings these three above-mentioned women together, imagining how they may occupy their time and process their experiences after awaking in an underground refuge, awaiting their return to the land of the living and a changed husband. But can their abusers be changed? Why is it the women who must suffer? Should a more radical approach be taken?

Part critique, part love letter to the Bard, this is a modern reimagining of Shakespeare's women, centering their stories and their voices, examining the same cycle of violence we are still plagued by 400+ years later.

Team: Emma Wright (playwright), + more...

Run Time: ~90 minutes

Content Warnings: Talk of domestic violence/abuse & suicide, coarse language