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2026 Actors Ensemble
From left: Roger Adam Smith, Mary Haire, Richard Mason, Chloe Schwank, Othniel Mani, Penny Day & Christine Greenough.
The BARD Project: Richard the Second 2026 development workshop weekend took place at ReadyMade Works Rehearsal Studio in Sydney, Australia.
On Saturday the 11th of April the focus was on The Discontentment Scenes in the play. These are the scenes that give vent to the grievances, issues, covert plans, plots, desires and lengths that all characters will go to achieve their individual/collective ends, whatever they may be.
From these scenes, we come to understand that the realm is beset by numerous cracks in the political and social fabric upon which the King's power is leveraged on. Even though he has the divine right of succession on his side, it's never a guarantee of monarchial success in all thing's governance.
Because running a country requires extensive temporal power too - loyalists close at hand, a substantial standing army, money in the Ex-checker's Purse, political allies, ecclesial sanction, aristocratic support, international favor and the support of the common folk no matter what class they were in.
The Table Read: For the scene work on Saturday, we started the day with a table read so that we could gain an insight into the context and circumstances of the particular moments in those scenes that would be put on the floor in the afternoon block.
Saturday workshop key foci -
*Contextualizing relationships.
*Establishing circumstances.
*Drilling down into the interpersonal relationships in those scenes at that point in the play.
3 Scenes, 7 Actors, Multiple roles
The Floor Work: With script-in-hand, actors put the scenes up on the floor in the afternoon session.
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