Why would I want to recreate such a play? you might be asking. Well, in 1996 when I was ready to leave teaching and start on a new journey, I wanted to put myself to the challenge and decided to rewrite one of Shakespeare's comedy plays with a Samoan/Pasifika flavour. That year I gifted it to the school for their next school production which they sadly did not produce so it's been collecting dust on my book shelf for many years and now it's time to give it the light of day in this publication.
So it's now been 20 years since I first re-wrote this play. I remember also showing two other high school drama teachers the play but because of the dense nature of the words i.e. very wordy, it's probably more easier for a professional group to perform rather than a group of high schoolers (I think in retrospect) but then I could be proven wrong.
I really wanted to do this as I thought that would be a neat challenge for me, as a writer, to take on a very famous writer and comedy play, if not his most famous comedy, and to write it in a Samoan/Pasifika context. I'd also been studying Shakespeare at Uni and had taught his plays to senior English students and thought why not?
So that's a bit of background as to why I decided to adapt this play and if I have some time later, I might consider adapting one of his tragedies. As I've studied many of his plays including Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet, and have taught Othello and King Lear as well as Macbeth.
It's going to definitely be a busy weekend with blurbs to write and title cover pages to design for the next book launch - never a dull moment!...
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