Theatre interview: Much Ado about Nothing, by Baked Shakespeare, launches in Cape Town, 2021

Theatre interview: Much Ado about Nothing, by Baked Shakespeare, launches in Cape Town, from August 7, 2021

Young theatre makers in Cape Town are launching Baked Shakespeare in the bakery at the Olympia Café in Kalk Bay on August 7- with a fun and exuberant take on Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing. It is the Bard which has been Baked and is likely to be very different to any Shakespeare that you have experienced in the past. It is a new concept; conceived in Cape Town, in lockdown, when inspiration was on the high and had nowhere to go. Now, the stage is set for the reveal of Baked Shakespeare – the Much Ado about Nothing– edition. The season runs until August 28, 2021- Friday and Saturday nights at 7.30pm. Jake Maisel has done the adaption -in the Baked Shakespeare state of mind.

Baked Shakespeare has been inspired by Drunk Shakespeare- a theatre format which has been hugely popular in the USA. Jake Maisel saw a Drunk Shakespeare show in New York in 2018 and loved the innovative approach to staging the Bard. He says: “The concept stuck with me. As an actor during the Covid lockdown, I had a burning desire to create work. Theatres were for the most part, closed during lockdown. Limited work was available, but looking to the future, with things hopefully opening up, I thought it would be great to create an innovative platform for young theatre makers- with Shakespeare plays as the baseline. I am a Marijuana user and had been toying with the idea of using weed in a show and then it came to me that it would be take the concept of Drunk Shakespeare into another realm.  In Drunk Shakespeare, the idea is that a person in the cast gets drunk on stage. That shifts the way each performance plays out as the smashed performer may go off script or do something wacky. With Baked Shakespeare, we have one performer, smoking a joint through the duration of the show. This may alter the playing and delivery of lines and brings in excitement to each performance – what may occur because one of our actors is Baked. As far as we know, this is something that has never been done before. We decided to kick off Baked Shakespeare, with the Bard’s classic comedy, Much Ado about Nothing. It is a play full of lunacy and tons of laughs which love.”

The idea is to create a Baked Shakespeare franchise in Cape Town, and inject the Bard’s plays with a dose of mind-expanding inspiration. Maisel:  “We hope to create a fantastic portfolio of Baked Shakespeare productions and make this into energetic and vibey platform – Shakespeare which is young and edgy. We want people to enjoy themselves as they watch us having fun with the Bard and his brilliant plays which are universally relatable and speak to us on many levels. We are offering amazing performances; a crazy night of fun and laughter and the best way to hide from the cold. We are creating a psychedelic evening in the bakery.”