Two Palmerston North students selected for Young Shakespeare Company

Jacob Waugh (left) and Eli Hancock have been selected for the 2023 Young Shakespeare Company and will be going to London's Globe in July. Photo / Cameron Baker

Eli Hancock and Jacob Waugh are talking and travelling Shakespeare ambassadors.

They are also part of a group of Palmerston North students staging Shakespeare’s most violent tragedy this week - though in an abridged form, as the play is only 90 minutes long.

The Tragedy of Macbeth, as performed by Shakespeare’s North Productions, emphasises the relationships explored in the play. The four shows are already sold out, but more could be in the pipeline.

Hancock and Waugh, who were in Year 13 at Palmerston North Boys’ High School last year, are members of the 2023 Young Shakespeare Company.

In July they will travel to London’s Globe for the trip of a lifetime, culminating in a performance on the greatest stage in history.

The Young Shakespeare Company is selected by the Shakespeare Globe Centre New Zealand.

The Tragedy of Macbeth is Hancock’s directing debut. The 18-year-old is also playing Lady Macbeth.

A supervisor at Countdown, he will spend about six weeks in Europe after the London trip as part of his gap year.

Hancock says Shakespeare is niche and can be inaccessible. He wants to bring it to a younger audience, providing them with a play they can follow and enjoy.

Waugh, 18, is heading to Victoria University of Wellington to study law, philosophy and psychology.

Waugh says the Bard’s works have a reputation of being hard to understand, but they are really full of entertainment, crime and drama.

Hancock came up with the idea of staging a fundraising play soon after he and Waugh learned they were off to London.

“We really threw ourselves in the deep end from day one.”

Jacob Waugh plays Macbeth, who is pushed by his wife to take the Scottish throne but becomes paranoid when he succeeds. Photo / Cameron Baker

It is the first time Waugh has played the main character in a production; it is also the first full-length production he’s been in.

Waugh says he has to be as malleable as possible; to make himself a lump of clay Hancock can shape.

Acting is a team sport, and playing the lead does not make him more pivotal or important. His character just happens to have more lines.

Joining the young men in the play - whose ages range from 14 to 18 - is Palmerston North Boys’ High science teacher Phillip Mills. Mills brought Hancock and Waugh together for last year’s regional Shakespeare competition. They went on to the nationals, and then were two of 48 students selected to go to Dunedin for a week-long programme. Twenty-four students were then chosen for the London trip.

“We lost our minds when we got that call,” Hancock says.

Lady Macbeth is insane, incredibly ambitious and bloodthirsty, he says.

Macbeth is pushed by his wife to take the Scottish throne, but becomes paranoid when he succeeds.

“The tighter you hold on to something, the more it slips through your fingers,” Waugh says.

Lady Macbeth is one of the strongest female characters ever written - not just a passive wife, but full of crazy blind attraction.

The Tragedy of Macbeth will be Eli Hancock's directing debut. Photo / Cameron Baker

Hancock has been in the crew for Act Three Productions, appeared in Boys’ High productions, and was the 2022 joint winner of Boys’ High’s dux artium.

Waugh was proxime accessit, the runner-up to the dux litterarum.