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Dead Poets Live: Onlie Begetter

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Dead Poets Live presents a dramatised reading of Shakespeare’s Sonnets

For more than 150 years following their publication, Shakespeare’s Sonnets lay uncontested, largely unread. The details of the love story that they seem to tell followed them into obscurity, but remained there, so that when they finally re-emerged, in 1780, as literary biography was booming, the Sonnets appeared as a tantalising enigma. ‘With this key’, as Wordsworth said, ‘Shakespeare unlocked his heart’. As a record of feeling Shakespeare’s Sonnets remain shockingly, radically intimate, perhaps the most scrupulous and passionate autobiographical sequence ever written. But as a record of fact they continue to elude, perplex and ruin even the soundest minds. Who is the ‘Mr W. H.’ to whom the 1609 Sonnets were dedicated? Who is the Friend the sonnets themselves address? Are they one and the same? Is he the ‘onlie begetter’ of the dedication? Or is the ‘onlie begetter’ someone else? Is it Shakespeare? Who is the ‘Dark Woman’, and what exactly is her relation to the ‘Friend’? And who is the ‘Rival Poet’? What happens in the sonnets? Does it happen in the right order? And are we really as far above these questions as we pretend to be?

Tracing and retracing the riddles of the sonnets where others have followed and fallen before, Dead Poets Live returns to The Coronet Theatre to present this great sequence in all its glory.

Dead Poets Live have established a cult following at The Coronet Theatre for their dramatised readings of classic poetry, attracting some of Britain’s finest actors including Charlotte Rampling, Miranda Richardson and Tom Hiddleston. All proceeds from their evenings go to the charity Safe Passage. Dead Poets Live is devised and supported by The TS Eliot Foundation.

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Safe Passage
Dead Poets Live donate all the proceeds from our shows to Safe Passage, a charity which helps unaccompanied child refugees and vulnerable adults in Europe find safe, legal routes to the UK. Safe Passage’s legal team works with families living in the UK who are trying to reunite with relatives that are asylum seekers in Europe and on dangerous journeys. The aim is for refugees to avoid falling into the hands of smugglers or risk life-threatening routes to Britain.

Only half a per cent (0.54%) of the UK’s total population is made up of asylum seekers and refugees, and when accounting for population size, the UK ranks 19th overall in Europe for asylum applications received. Those that do come to the UK do so for various reasons – many make the journey to reach family and friends, because of cultural ties, or through no choice of their own, because of the actions of traffickers. Most of the Ukrainians we have supported at Safe Passage wanted to come to the UK because they saw Britain as a welcoming country that respected human rights. However, the vast majority of even the small number who attempt to reach the UK end up in Calais and Dunkirk with no access to safe routes. Between 2010 and 2020, only 6% of unaccompanied children who received asylum in the UK arrived via a safe route. Since the Government closed the two major safe routes for unaccompanied children, 83% fewer refugees have arrived via a safe route in the 12 months to June 2023 compared to the previous year.

Two years since Kabul fell to the Taliban, and the Government is still failing to honour its commitments to help Afghans reach safety. Through our legal work, we have observed first-hand that the current schemes are too slow and too restrictive. Many at-risk Afghans have no way to reach safety in the UK, and families who were separated in the evacuation still have no way to reunite with their children and loved ones. Without functioning safe routes, more and more eligible Afghans have been left with no choice but to risk dangerous journeys to reach safety in the UK. To the end of August this year 4,080 Afghans crossed the Channel, compared to just 69 Afghans crossing the Channel in the whole of 2019. Currently, around 1 in 5 of all people crossing the Channel are from Afghanistan. To urgently prevent further loss of life and to honour these commitments, the Government must act now to provide safe routes and offer welcome and compassion to Afghans in need of safety.

We’re the only organisation working with children at risk on the ground in both the country they find themselves in and the country they wish to reach. This, combined with our high quality casework, is unique and has proven particularly effective at cracking open legal routes.

Our field teams help identify and support child refugees who are eligible for transfer and ensure this happens quickly and safely. Where there are unexpected delays we reassure the child and make sure they remain out of the hands of smugglers.

Our team attend the arrivals of child refugees we’ve helped reunite with family, to make sure they have a welcoming face when they arrive in their new home and restart their life in the UK. We also have a volunteer Community Mentoring programme that helps refugees settle by helping them register with a GP, sign up for school or other specialist organisations that may assist them with specific problems.’

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