Shakespeare is not for hushed playhouses, velvet seats and yawning arts patrons.
Shakespeare is alive. It is bawdy. It is messy. It is energetic. It is entertainment.
Shakespeare has his roots in pubs.
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Shakespeare’s first plays were written specifically to be performed in the yards of Elizabethan inns. The players would move from pub to pub and play in the beer gardens, passing around a hat at the end. The plays were quick and lively, with music and clowning.
So one night (funnily enough, after performing a Shakespeare play), we were having a pint and wondered what the experience of seeing Shakespeare in a pub would be like now.
What if a group of great actors took over the beer garden or the band room of a pub for a night of story-telling?
What if instead of going down to the pub to have a pint and hear a band, you went to have a pint or two and watch a bit of Shakespeare? Instead of going to your local for trivia night, you got your mates together to go watch a play?
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And so Bar’d Work was born.
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Behind Bar’d Work
Natalie Lines

Natalie is a British-born independent theatre producer and writer based in Sydney. She has produced Bar’d Work’s sellout Sydney and Melbourne season of Much Ado About Nothing, and Sydney’s Twelfth Night, alongside Fledgling Theatre Company’s Appropriation. She is also an occasional writer, when she’s not at her actual day job.