Here is a little video from our first rehearsal. Lachie is already bringing Touchstone to life!
You don’t want to miss this one!
‘I Am Emilia Bassano’ is playing at the Justin Art House Museum in Prahran between the 13th – 21st of August 2022.
Book your tickets and unmask the truth at bit.ly/iamemiliabassanotickets
‘I Am Emilia Bassano’ is playing at the Justin Art House Museum in Prahran between the 13th – 21st of August 2022.
To book your tickets and unmask the truth visit bit.ly/iamemiliabassanotickets
Meet John!
John Warszawski is an Australian playwright based in Melbourne. Born in Paris, France 1946 to parents who had arrived as orphaned refugees from war and holocaust. At the age of 3 he moved to Melbourne which he has since called home.
John graduated from Monash University with a degree in Economics and Politics but worked as a carpenter and furniture maker. At the age 39 – 41 he completed a dramatic writing degree at the Victorian College of the Arts and wrote “Charlotte: Life or Theatre”which had a season at the Grant Street theatre, “The Last Nurse Graduation” he wrote and co-produced for an audience of 2500 past and present nurse graduates of Prince Henry’s Hospital, wrote and performed Wasserman and Brenner at Kadimah, “Herbert House” and “From Simche Bayevsky to Sydney Myers”, Co-directed “Nign” to a packed Palais. He Translated “The Sneeze” from Yiddish.
John maintained his carpentery career until the age of seventy two when he read an article in The Atlantic Monthly “Was Shakespeare a Woman?”. This prompted him to research and write his new play, “I Am Emilia Bassano”.
John wonders if the history of his own life produced a particular kind of concern with injustices of history, perpetrated by the mainstream, but lived individually. He believes these never entirely go away. There is no more emblematic and relevant example of this than John’s own play, ‘I am Emilia Bassano.’
‘I Am Emilia Bassano’ is playing at the Justin Art House Museum in Prahran between the 13th – 21st of August 2022.
Book your tickets and unmask the truth at bit.ly/iamemiliabassanotickets 
Meet Briony Dunn!
Briony is directing ‘I Am Emilia Bassano’.
Briony Dunn is a director, dramaturge and arts leader whose work focusses on new writing and framing the classics through a contemporary feminist lens. She is Literary Manager at Theatre Works, co-Artistic Director of Iron Lung Theatre, an MTC Women in Theatre alumni (2020-21), a directing graduate of NIDA and has a Master of Arts in Theatre (UNSW). Briony has worked with some of Australia’s finest arts organisations including Theatre Works, Company B Belvoir, Griffin, Belvoir Downstairs, Playwriting Australia, NIDA and ATYP. Directing credits include When the Rain Stops Falling by Andrew Bovell, ‘night, Mother by Marsha Norman, Blank by Alice Birch, Electra, Orestes and The Women of Troy by Euripides, Der Hamletmachine by Heiner Muller, Endgame by Beckett, No Exit by Sartre, The Threepenny Opera by Bertholt Brecht, Ruffian on the Stair by Joe Orton and A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams. Briony recently directed Cocteau’s The Human Voice produced by Theatre Works.
‘I Am Emilia Bassano’ is playing at the Justin Art House Museum in Prahran between the 13th – 21st of August 2022.
Book your tickets and unmask the truth at bit.ly/iamemiliabassanotickets.
Meet Emily!
Emily is producing ‘I am Emilia Bassano’.
Emily Star is a theater maker who works in a variety of multidisciplinary settings. Originally from Brisbane, Emily is now based in Naarm, Melbourne after graduating with a Bachelor of Performing Arts (performance making) from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA).
Emily’s practise spans across producing, directing, movement and improvisation which she uses to see projects through from conceptualisation to outcome. Emily is also a technically trained dancer and actor, and has worked professionally in a variety of contexts. Emily has been working as an independent with a curiosity for pushing the boundaries of audience experience through presenting multidisciplinary forms.
Her recent credits include Scars and Sweet Potato Chips (Performer), Miss Westralia (Movement director/Choreographer, Western Sky Projects, 2021), Fresh Takes (Writer/Performer, 2021), The Augmented (Devisor/Performer, SPPT, 2021), TILT (Writer/Director/Performer, WAAPA, 2020), Wild Cherries (Performer, WAAPA, 2020). Emily is currently assistant producing the Australian premiere season of ‘Radiant Vermin’ with Studio Sputnik.
Emily’s making is grounded in sustainable practices, she is excited to be on the ‘I Am Emilia Bassano’ team.
‘I Am Emilia Bassano’ is playing at the Justin Art House Museum in Prahran between the 13th – 21st of August 2022.
Book your tickets and unmask the truth at bit.ly/iamemiliabassanotickets
Actors: Leah Filley & Josiah Lulham
Director: Briony Dunn
I AM EMILIA BASSANO – Was Shakespeare A Woman?
PERFORMANCES: August 13,14 and 20, 21
VENUE: JAHM gallery, Melbourne Prahran
A stage play about the 17th century poet Emilia Bassano whom many now believe to be the Dark Lady of the sonnets and the true author of the Shakespeare works.
“Shakespeare has no heroes – only heroines,” wrote the 19thC critic J. Ruskin
TEN of these heroines defy their father’s, bucking betrothals they don’t like, to find their own paths to love.
EIGHT disguise themselves as men, outwitting patriarchal controls – More gender swapping than in any previous English plays.
SIX LEAD ARMIES
THE FIRST FEMINIST SPEECH IN ENGLISH LITERATURE:
By the maid in Othello who happens to be named Emilia::
“….have not we affections, desires, temptations, as men have?
Then let them use us well: else let them know,
The ills we do, their ills instruct us so…..”
A WOMAN’S WAR CRY:
Kate, in Taming of the Shrew:
“My tongue will tell the anger of my heart,
Or else my heart, concealing it will break…”
THE WOMENS REVOLUTION:
The Shakespeare plays, unlike any plays before are manned by women who defy the societal limits put on them. No plays before had created such intelligent and complex portrayals of women.
We see the world through women’s eyes. Even male characters are given new depth, as if seen through a woman’s eyes. What would Hamlet be without the perspectives created by his mother Gertrude and his lover Ophelia?
IS THIS THE SMOKING GUN?
There are two versions of “The Taming of the Shrew” – one is a rewrite of the other. They include a daughter named Emilia, a father named Baptista (Emilia’s real father’s name), and Alphonso (her real husband’s name – married the year the play was written).
Yes, surely the jury (that’s you) would know a smoking gun when they see one and find her highly suspect of writing this play.
~
In fact,
SIXTEEN SHAKESPEARE CHARACTERS HAVE EMILIA’S NAME –
WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS?
Her name on her birth document is Emilia Baptista Bassano. 16 characters in the Shakespeare plays are named Emilia or Baptista or Bassano.
Could this just be a coincidence?
Or was this Emilia’s way of signing her plays while remaining anonymous?
Emilia in Othello: “Have not we affections, desires, temptations, as men have? Then let them use us well: else let them know, the ills we do, their ills instruct us so.”
“So what’s your problem?”
~
SHAKESPEARE’S EXTREME IRONY
Shakespeare, the attributed author of 36 plays that are replete with fiercely intelligent and educated women, left both his daughters illiterate. They couldn’t even read the plays.
“What f–kn’ plays?”
I Am Emilia Bassano 