SEVENTEEN Jamaican high schools have taken up the challenge to participate in the inaugural Shakespeare Schools’ Championship. However, only one school will be able to take their production on tour of the United Kingdom in 2016 – the 400th anniversary of the death of the English literary giant.

As part of the tour, the winning school will have the opportunity to perform their play in London, Birmingham and Manchester. They will also showcase their talent at Stratford-upon-Avon – Shakespeare’s birthplace as well the famous Globe theatre in London. The Jamaican school will also participate in the International Shakespeare Festival with students from around the world. This is the first time Jamaica will participate in the festival which started in 1992.

Speaking at the launch of the championship at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in St Andrew on Wednesday, conceptualiser Dr Tony Sewell said one of the major challenges thrown out to the schools is to give the plays, which have been condensed into 30 minutes, a Jamaican context while maintaining the Elizabethan style of dialogue in which it was originally set by Shakespeare.

“There is a lot of mix up in Shakespeare and this is very Jamaican. Hamlet, for example, explored a man haunted by the ghost of his absent father. Many Jamaicans can relate to this and we can see how relevant this is,” Sewell Noted.

Each cast has been assigned a mentor to guide the cast. This cadre of mentors has been drawn from the local theatre community; they include stage and screen doyenne Leonie Forbes; playwright Aston Cooke; theatre activist Rayon McLean, and writer/director Bobby Clarke. They will be under the direction of chief mentor Dr Brian Heap.

In his charge to the schools, Heap urged the performers to take risks with their performances noting that there is more that connects Jamaica to Shakespeare than separates.

The championship, which is sponsored by Jamaica National Building Society, will see performances of nine Shakespeare classics including The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Henry V, Romeo and Juliet and The Taming of the Shrew.

A system of eliminations will see the school competing in the semi-finals from July 1-4 with top six advancing to the finals in September. Here they will be adjudicated by a panel headed by actress and broadcaster Fae Ellington and completed by Eugene Williams of the School of Drama, and actors Paul Issa and Alwyn Scott.