Shanty Productions is an independent film production company, co-founded by Rakie Ayola and Adam Smethurst, and committed to producing drama that speaks to a diverse audience. Its first production is a full text version of William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, a 400-year-old stage play adapted for the screen to reflect and reach multicultural Britain today.
Adapted and directed by Smethurst, with Welsh actor Ayola (Harry Potter and The Cursed Child) as Executive Producer, Twelfth Night is available on Amazon Prime and iTunes from Thursday 25 October 2018.
The film stars 2018 Olivier Award winner Sheila Atim as the Bard’s shipwrecked twins, Viola and Sebastian. She has previously performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company and in the Donmar Shakespeare Trilogy, and is currently playing the role of Emilia in Othello at Shakespeare’s Globe.
This is a modern, full text version of Shakespeare’s tale of unrequited love, which also features Shalini Peiris as Olivia, Antony Bunsee as Malvolio, Zackary Momoh as Antonio and Upstart Crow’s Dominic Coleman as Sir Andrew Aguecheek among its talented cast.
Twelfth Night is the first feature from Shanty Productions; a new independent film production company committed to producing exceptional drama for diverse, multicultural audiences – creating worlds they recognise and characters they can relate to on accessible platforms for today’s digital natives.
Commenting on the driving force behind Shanty Productions, Co-Founder Rakie Ayola said, “It is essentially the realisation that Adam and I could put our money where our mouths are, channel our skills and produce the kind of work we want to see. Work that combines our love of Shakespeare with our need to represent the world as we see it – as we’d like our daughters and their contemporaries to see it.”
On his decision to start with an adaptation of Twelfth Night, Adam Smethurst explained, “With the widespread rise of anti-immigrant populism and governments actively encouraging a hostile environment for refugees, telling the story of the outsider surviving in an alien world on her wit, charm and ingenuity became and remains compellingly urgent.”
Lead actor Sheila Atim added, “We’re not trying to dumb Shakespeare down; we’re not trying to make it what it isn’t so people can digest it. We’re staying absolutely true to what it is. We’re just bringing it forward to a time when people may feel like they can connect with it more.”
Twelfth Night is available on Amazon Prime and iTunes from Thursday 25 October 2018. For more details, visit the Shanty Productions website.
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