HOLDEN & ARTS ASSOCIATES
SHARING STORIES AND CREATING PARTNERSHIPS SINCE 1983
NEARLY LEAR
Adapted from Shakespeare by Susanna Hamnett and Edith Tankus
Produced and Performed by Susanna Hamnett
From London, England
What if the great and tragic story of King Lear were to be told through the eyes of his closest companion? In this award-winning and dynamic one-woman tour-de-force, Susanna Hamnett plays the Fool (and every other character) to tell a very personal and poignant story that - with breathtaking hilarity and heartache - honors the beautiful language of Lear while taking a bit of poetic license.
Created with Edith Tankus (Kneehigh, Shakespeare’s Globe), and with initial development in association with Emma Rice and Mike Shepherd of internationally-acclaimed Kneehigh Theatre, NEARLY LEAR is an exuberant blend of tragedy and humor that has toured internationally to critical and audience acclaim. It has run on Broadway at the New Victory Theater, the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, and the Sydney Opera House, Australia. It also won the IPAY Victor (People's Choice) Award for Outstanding Production in 2012. More recently it was acclaimed as a Fringe Outstanding Production at the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe and in February 2024 received the Best Show Award at the Riverside Studios’ Bitesize Festival in London.
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“A virtuosic performer with a touch of the endearing goofball”
Charles Isherwood, The New York Times
Resources
About the Company
Best for: Grades 8th+
Audience Size: Small & Medium Venues
(up to 400 seats depending on venue sight lines)
Interview with Susanna Hammnett
NEARLY LEAR highlights trailer
Please contact us to watch an archival full length recording.
Curriculum Connections
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Fine Arts: Theater, Clowning, Music, Production Design
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Language Arts: Shakespeare, Characters, Adaptation
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History: British History, Jesters & Historic Clowns
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Emotional/Social Learning Development: Self-Awareness, Relationship Skills, Responsible Decision-Making, Social Awareness, Leadership, Families, Loss and Grief
Outreach and Workshops
Susanna teaches workshops to students of all ages and levels, as well as to teachers and to members of the public. She works to create an atmosphere of fun, trust, and exploration, where participants feel safe and encouraged to take risks and make discoveries. Her classes invite playfulness and presence, with a focus on Shakespeare, Clown, or Wit and Wordplay, although there are areas of overlap between them.
SHAKESPEARE (for teachers): an energetic experiential workshop for teachers, offering playful, dynamic ways for their students to connect imaginatively and physically with Shakespeare’s language and characters.
SHAKESPEARE (for students): an energetic and playful workshop inviting students to use impulse and imagination to make emotional connections with aspects of Shakespeares’s language and characters.
CLOWN: exploring presence and building confidence, using the “smallest mask” - the red nose - and the joy of play. Clown games and exercises help nurture an honest emotional connection with one’s own feelings and the ability to share that with an audience.
WIT & WORDPLAY: developing a facility to play around freely and joyfully with words helps build confidence and fluency in authentically expressing feelings and owning our own voices and right to speak. This fun and humour-filled work is based on the teaching of Merry Conway, and is taught with her permission.
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Sensory Friendly Performances
NEARLY LEAR is available as a “sensory friendly” or “relaxed” performance if arranged with the company in advance and with specific direction as to what adjustments are necessary for your venue.
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Minimum Technical Requirements
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Load In Time: 3 – 4 hours
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Crew Needs: 1 Lighting Technician for load in and show + 1 Sound Technician for load in only
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Min. Stage Size: 20 – 25’ wide x 15’ feet deep
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Sound Needs: PA System, Lav mic such as Countryman B3
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Projection Needs: ability to connect the Company’s projector (at front of the stage) to the sound booth
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Load Out Time: 1 hour
NEARLY LEAR is extremely adaptable to different spaces and to the technical capabilities of each venue.
Artistic Team
Adapted from Shakespeare by Susanna Hamnett and Edith Tankus
Initial research and development in association with Emma Rice and Mike Shepherd of Kneehigh Theatre, England
Performer: Susanna Hamnett
Director: Edith Tankus
Additional Direction: Steve MacGregor
Original Lighting Design: Michelle Ramsay
Set Design: Lindsay Anne Black
Sound: Gavin Fearon
Film: David Parker
Awards & Critical Acclaim
2024 Best Show Award – Bitesize Festival, Riverside Studios, London
2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe Outstanding Production and Offie Nominated Show
2012 International Performing Arts for Youth (IPAY) Victor Award for Outstanding Production
“A funny, engaging and captivating production of King Lear, writer-performer Susanna Hamnett enraptures the audience with her remarkable delivery, seamlessly inhabiting multiple characters. **** (4 Stars!)” - EVERYTHING THEATRE. For full review from the August 2023 run, click here.
“Susanna Hamnett is an extraordinary, virtuoso character actor in the tradition of a music hall performer, a master of mime and mimicry, a clown, stand up comic and singer. With vivacious energy she races around the stage, switching roles in split second changes of voice, accent, facial expression, portraying horses and soldiers with childlike glee….. A magical, operatic, world-class, theatrical experience worthy of being staged at the Edinburgh International Festival. ***** (5 Stars!)” – Edinburgh Guide. For full review from the August 2023 run, click here.
“Intense, energetic, inventive and deeply moving… This outstanding production seamlessly weaves poignant moments, mischievous charm, tragic depth, and hilarious wit into one strong narrative, all fueled by Hamnet’s intense and energetic inventiveness. It will stay with the audience long after they have left the theatre. OUTSTANDING SHOW” - FringeReview. For full review from the August 2023 run, click here.
“This is the formidable task that the British-born actress Susanna Hamnett and the director Edith Tankus have set for themselves — and accomplish with surprising brio and humor — in Nearly Lear an engaging solo show presented by the New Victory Theater at the Duke on 42nd St…It’s a frisky, funny, vaudevillian…tantalizing introduction to the lifelong pleasures of Shakespeare…Creditably, Nearly Lear doesn’t add any sugar to Shakespeare’s sanguinary story, letting the corpses fall where they may…An energetic, virtuosic performer with a touch of the endearing goofball…Leaping from character to character — a slightly stiff, self-important Lear; a simpering Regan; a snooty Goneril; a sincere Cordelia — she manages to give each character a distinct voice (the varied accents are impeccable), and she keeps the story in clear focus…… the most enjoyable — O.K., maybe the only enjoyable — example of audience participation I’ve ever witnessed..But Ms. Hamnett does not fail to honor the ultimate darkness of the play’s vision… I found myself eyeing that tissue box forlornly once or twice.” Charles Isherwood, New York Times. (January 10th, 2011)
“Everyone interested in the theatre and drama should have been at the Aberdeen Arts Centre last night, there should have been queues up and down King Street. Such is the mighty theatrical force that is Susanna Hamnett and her one-woman version of Shakespeare’s King Lear – Nearly Lear (created with and directed by Edith Tankus)… Hamnett is a seriously gifted actress… skilled in Shakespeare, clown, vaudeville and storytelling… Retold through the eyes of court jester, Noreen, played with razor-sharp hypertension by Hamnett, the tale unfolds at gunfire velocity with more wit, mischief and sheer playfulness than you can legally pack into 80 minutes of live theatre…
Every character is vividly etched and Hamnett plays them all with dazzling verve…bringing Shakespeare to life with a vibrancy (the audience) will never forget.” -Roddy Phillips, Aberdeen Press and Journal. (October 27th, 2010)
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“I am so inspired by your play I went to the library and got a book by Shakespeare. It was so amazing I cannot explain it. It was way beyond amazing. It was perfect!’ -Emelia, student, Dundas PS
"It is a tragedy, but you made it a tragedy with the right amount of sadness and much humour…The students were spellbound throughout. They were with you all the way. Well done! I hope that you can bring this wonderful experience before the hundreds of students who are in our schools and who will just eat up this classical work, be inspired to explore Shakespeare and themselves feel moved to tell stories in such a creative way." -Gerry Mabin, founder of The Mabin School
Company Background
Past North American Tours include: Nearly Lear (2012-2017) & Hotel Elsinore (fall 2024)
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“My work is, I think, the confused love child of two quite different approaches to theatre: a traditional classical theatre training and theatrical clown. It is this tension between being over-earnest and serious, whilst longing for some riotous and mischievous foolery that seems to shape how I approach everything – performing, teaching and directing. Or maybe that’s just being British!”
Susanna Hamnett arrived at her acting career sideways – “rather like a crab” as director Christopher Morahan once observed, scrutinizing her resumé. Having graduated from Cambridge University in Russian and French she then she won scholarships to study acting at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, under the tutelage of renowned Shakespeare and Voice coach Patsy Rodenburg, and worked professionally in England and Europe, as well as a period at the Moscow Arts Theatre School.
Discovering theatrical clowning for the first time through the work of Russian clown, Slava Polunin, she set out to learn as much as possible about the art, and moved to Toronto to study with master clowns John Turner and Michael Kennard (of “Mump and Smoot”) with whom she trained and collaborated extensively. She then began to develop and direct clown-influenced shows herself, exploring and evolving an approach to marrying seemingly disparate disciplines - Shakespeare, clown, storytelling, dance, vaudeville, the serious and the mischievous.
It is this approach and curiosity that also drives her work as an artist-educator, and she has worked in Canada and the US with students of all ages and backgrounds, from university students to at-risk youth, to school children as young as six. She has been a part of Lincoln Center’s Aesthetic Education Program and in 2012 the Kennedy Center’s Theatre for Young Audiences department in Washington, DC commissioned her to work on a new solo script which she presented at New Visions New Voices the following year. In 2014 she was awarded the inaugural Colleen Porter Residency Award (IPAY), which took her to Australia and Tasmania.
Susanna is passionate about creating work that is inspiring, meaningful and entertaining for both young and adult audiences, and believes in the vital importance of intergenerational audience experiences.
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For more information, please visit the company’s website: http://www.susannahamnett.com/
Gallery of Past Productions
