A Walk through the life of William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes

Written by Asa and Federico Palomera as a part of The Age Melbourne Writer's Festival, August, 2005. The play opened to a capacity crowd at the Malthouse Beckett theatre, and had a rerun at Chapel off Chapel, which also sold out.

 The theme of the play was to compare two great sixteenth century writers, who had never met, but lived contemporaneously. The two had many similarities in their work and background. Their lives sometimes seem to be an inverted reflection of one another. Shakespeare grew rich, while Cervantes remained poor. Cervantes collected taxes to have the Spanish Armada attack England. Shakespeare had occasion to celebrate it's defeat. The two men even died on the same date, though not on the same day an irony both authors would have keenly appreciated. Both reached great fame, lasting through the centuries.

 The production tells the story of these two characters though dance, music and monologues from their works, as well as stories from their lives. The performers consisted of two men and four women, as well as six live musicians from Ensemble 21 and Rosa Seria, performing music from the sixteenth century, played on copies of original instruments.