'The Shaftesbury Players' is the story of a group of actors putting on a low budget version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in a provincial theatre.
The idea behind the film was to create situations where the characters were in constant conflict with one another in meager working conditions.
We wanted to contrast the emotions and goals of actors at different stages of their careers; the driven young female lead living the dream, the young male lead out of his depth, the megalomaniac director and the older actors who've seen it all before.
We were very fortunate to have an excellent cast who were able to take the script and develop their roles into the sometimes charming and sometimes unpleasant characters you see on screen. Off screen, the actors could not...