Skip to Main Content

UNF English students re-envision Shakespeare in collaboration with Globe Theatre in London

UNF Shadow Company writersUniversity of North Florida English students are creatively re-envisioning one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays in collaboration with the world-renowned Globe Theatre in London this summer and plan to tour the production to various local community partners.

The students, led by English instructor and Hicks Honors College fellow Will Pewitt, are adapting one of Shakespeare’s most complex comedies, “Much Ado About Nothing”—a play thematized by stigmatic gendering and its dynamics with the problematic potency of class—by deconstructing the inherited drama and reconstructing it more inclusively.

The group calls themselves “The Shadow Company” a nod to how the vital task of script writing is completed behind the scenes and in the “shadows”—a colloquial term in Shakespeare’s day for members of theatrical companies.

UNF students involved in the project include Emma Avros, a double major in psychology and English, Janson Cobiella, English major, Hicks Honors College students Jade Marino, double major in classical voice and English, and Nathan Turoff, an interdisciplinary studies major concentrating in theatre.