A history of Trinity College’s Shakespeare in the Quad and an interview with the directors of this year’s production, The Taming of the Shrew
Elizabeth Riddolls, Staff Writer
A MULBERRY tree, grown from Shakespeare’s mulberry tree in Stratford-upon-Avon, once stood proud in the northeast corner of the Trinity College quad. Planted in 1951, the tree commemorated the founding of Canada’s first Shakespeare festival two years earlier, performed and celebrated in the quad. Neither the tree nor the festival lasted long—within a decade, both had died. Still, Trinity College has stuck to its roots: today, the Bard’s shows continue to be performed for the Trinity College Dramatic Society’s (TCDS) annual Shakespeare in the Quad productions. This year, the TCDS produced The Taming of the Shrew, directed by Mia Aubuchon and Mia Rebelo.
In 1939, Mary Godwin and Earle Grey, a married couple from England, arrived in Canada with a touring theatre troupe. Although the troupe eventually returned home, Godwin and Grey stayed in Toronto. Noticing the lack of Shakespeare in the local theatre scene, they founded the Earle Grey Players in 1946, performing their first show, Twelfth Night, in the Trinity College quad to roaring success.
In 1949, Godwin and Grey expanded their repertoire, putting on the first Canadian Shakespeare Festival in late June. The festival included a production of As You Like It in the Trinity quad, exhibits on Shakespeare at the Royal Ontario Museum and the Toronto Art Gallery, and free Elizabethan music concerts with period instruments. Godwin and Grey were also eager to spread Shakespeare to students, putting on several productions in 1947 at the Central High School of Commerce, and later, in schools across small-town Ontario. For many students these productions were their first opportunity to experience Shakespeare live.
With the support of the Trinity College provost at the time, Reginald S. K. Seeley, the Earle Grey Players continued to put on their festival for the next decade, expanding it to a five-week affair and touring schools as far as the Maritimes. Then, tragedy struck. Provost Seeley was killed in a car accident in 1957, meaning the Earle Grey players lost their main benefactor and, soon after, their access to the quad.
The festival’s popularity had already been waning since the advent of the Stratford Festival in 1953. The Earle Grey Players insisted on historically accurate interpretations of texts and rejected, to quote Grey, “stunts, fashionable slants, Freudian implications, and silly-clever ideas which are the bane of the contemporary Shakespeare theatre.” In contrast, the Stratford Festival leaned into intricate, Hollywood-style productions, which Grey criticized harshly. He claimed that “the audience will only be confused by elaborate productions. Plays should be dressed in the period Shakespeare had in mind. To dress them in any other manner is a freakish idea.” Audiences clearly did not agree, and flocked to the Stratford Festival en masse, while the Earle Grey Players found their productions criticized as overly traditional.
The loss of venue and audiences led to the eventual shuttering of the Earle Grey Players’ festival in 1959. Still, the Trinity College Dramatic Society (TCDS), which existed as early as 1919, picked up the slack. Their first Shakespeare production was Much Ado About Nothing in 1930, and in the century since then, the TCDS has put on a variety of Shakespeare productions, somewhere along the way reviving the tradition of performing in the Trinity College quad.
This year, the TCDS continued the tradition of Shakespeare in the Quad by putting on The Taming of the Shrew, directed by Mia Aubuchon and Mia Rebelo, from October 17 to 19.
The Taming of the Shrew is a classic Shakespeare comedy that revolves around two sisters, Bianca and Katherine. Bianca has many suitors, but her father refuses to let her marry until her older sister Katherine, the titular “shrew,” gets married. Lucentio, who is in love with Bianca, secretly courts her, while Pertrucio, a wealthy and eccentric man from Verona, decides to take on the challenge of “taming” Katherine. After their marriage, Pertrucio abuses Katherine until she submits to him, and Bianca is finally permitted to marry Lucentio. Eventually, Petruchio presents a bet on whose wife is more obedient, and he wins when Katherine obeys immediately while the other wives do not.
The misogyny at the core of The Taming of the Shrew is difficult to miss, yet a debate remains: is the play sexist or subversive? Katherine is a strong-willed and intelligent female character, and given the play’s comedic nature, some argue that her eventual “taming” is satirized.
In my recent interview with Aubuchon and Rebelo, the show’s directors, they expressed their intention to confront this misogyny head-on. In fact, the way that the show discusses gender and gender roles influenced their choice to put it on. These issues make the show increasingly relevant to our current time. Katherine is unapologetically rude and abrasive, notes Rebelo, and her eventual “taming” can feel uncomfortable to modern audiences. According to Aubuchon, leaning into that discomfort and thus forcing the audience to sit with it allows us to confront the fact that the late-sixteenth-century gender norms depicted in the play still exist today, just in new forms.
Mixing the historical period that the show is set in with today’s world lays bare how, although particular performances of gender may have changed in the past four hundred years, gender is still inherently a performance. The Taming of the Shrew, as a comedy, is lighthearted yet sinister, given its extensive portrayal of spousal abuse. Teasing out how misogyny is embedded in the show’s humour is important to both directors.
Shakespeare’s writing is famously complex and lends itself to many interpretations. For Rebelo, translating these interpretations into movement and space has been one of the most exciting parts of direction. Yet this is not something the directors can do alone—oftentimes, the cast catches new threads and wordplay that would otherwise slip unnoticed.
As creatives that both act and direct, Aubuchon and Rebelo are able to approach direction from an actor’s perspective, allowing them to prioritize caring for the show’s actors. Understanding the vulnerability of acting and the needs of actors has allowed them to create a supportive environment where cast and crew flourish. Aubuchon notes that observing each actor’s unique process has been very special, alongside watching them develop their characters in unexpected ways.
To top it off, Aubuchon and Rebelo are both proud self-described Shakespeare nuts; for them, getting to engage with this show from both creative and academic perspectives has been incredibly exciting.
Aubuchon comes from a background in comedy, and was interested in bringing both physical comedy and principles of commedia dell’arte to The Taming of the Shrew. The term commedia dell’arte refers to an Italian theatrical form popular in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries that focused on ensemble acting, alongside improvisation and the parody of stock characters. She hopes to get the audience laughing, but also stopping to think about why exactly they’re laughing.
In contrast, Rebelo approaches The Taming of the Shrew as an English specialist with a love for early modern literature, especially Shakespeare. As a director, she enjoys focusing on dramaturgy and text and getting to do extensive character and text work. Watching the arc of the story, the plot, and the characters come together has been magical, she says.
All of this work from Aubuchon, Rebelo, and the cast and crew was on display in the Trinity College quad mid-October, with all the opportunities and challenges outdoor theatre presents. Directing a play in the quad, rather than in a theatre, has been more freeing than anything, notes Rebelo. Getting rid of traditional theatre conventions has allowed the directors to play with the space and really strip dramatic performance to its essentials. Every costume and prop has been chosen with care by designers Judy Wang and Maggie Tavares, and it shines through on stage.
The show, as was tradition with the Earle Grey players, was performed on the north side of the quad, which has presented opportunities to locate the show very firmly in the space. Actors are entering from all over, says Rebelo, hiding behind trees, moving through the audience, interacting during “entrances” and “exits,” and all-around leaning into the quirks of putting on a show outdoors.
Trinity College’s Shakespeare in the Quad is rooted in a rich history, and this year’s production of The Taming of the Shrew blends modernity and tradition. Put together in just under five weeks, the team’s commitment and dedication to the production has been incredible, notes Rebelo.
Thank you to Mia Aubuchon and Mia Rebelo for their comments, and Lindsay Grant, Rolph-Bell Archivist at the Trinity College Archives, for her help with archival research.
