Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble



The Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble (QSE) is an Australian theatre company. It is based in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, and is the resident theatre company of the University of Queensland.

Mission and Vision
The Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble exists to engage a variety of Queensland communities with the works of William Shakespeare - in order to strengthen the connections and relationships between community members, and to create evocative, engaging theatre that awakes the senses and impassions the lives of its audiences and artists.

QSE does this through performance, training of students, teachers, and actors, and a variety of community engagement projects such as the Arts in Community Enhancement project run in Queensland prisons in 2006, 2009 and 2010.

QSE sees theatre primarily as a medium for a community to speak the unspoken, and to ask the questions that are important to its survival and development. The Ensemble's core belief is that this process is most powerful when it is undertaken by a community of actors who train and work together on a regular basis.

Artistic Directors

 * Rob Pensalfini (2001- )
 * Suzanne Little (2001–2005)

Key Productions

 * As You Like It, directed by Rob Pensalfini (2002)
 * Pericles, directed by Ira Seidenstein (2003)
 * Coriolanus, directed by Anne Pensalfini (2003)
 * The Comedy of Errors, directed by Rob Pensalfini (2005)
 * The Madness of King Lear, an experimental re-working of King Lear, directed by Stephen Daniels (2005)
 * Shakespeare's Briefs, or Let's Kill All The Lawyers, featuring scenes from Shakespeare's plays which involve legal matters (such as Hermione's trial in The Winter's Tale), directed by Samid Suliman (2006)
 * Metamorphoses, an adaptation of Tales from Ovid, directed by Leah Mercer and Jo Loth (2006–2008)
 * Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Jo Loth (2007)
 * Twelfth Night, directed by Rob Pensalfini (2008)
 * As You Like It, directed by Paul Adams (2009)