Kate Herbert plays & theatre work: Love Is My Sin, production by Kate Herbert, May 2013

Love Is My Sin, Sonnets selected by Peter Brook

Director: Kate Herbert

Actors: Jenny Lovell, Geoff Wallis

Cellist: Helen Barclay

Presented at La Mama Theatre in May 2013

In Love Is My Sin, 29 Shakespeare Sonnets, performed by a Man and a Woman, are divided into four sections that illuminate the couple’s past love, their tender reminiscences, betrayal, jealousy and separation.

Jenny Lovell & Geoff Wallis in Love Is My Sin, May 2013

In 2007, I was privileged to see renowned director, Peter Brook, stage Love Is My Sin at his Paris theatre, Theatre Des Bouffes du Nord, featuring Brook’s wife, Natasha Parry, and Bruce Myers.

Brook adapts 29 of Shakespeare’s sonnets into an elegant, non-naturalistic, four-part duet exploring the anatomy of love, relationships, separation, jealousy, forgiveness and the changes wrought by time.

In our production, the actors refer to scripts, initially reading the sonnets – as Shakespeare intended. By increments, the piece evolves into a more theatrical style, a relationship, and a contemplation on love accompanied by live cello.

Helen Barclay, Jenny Lovell & Geoff Wallis in Love Is My Sin, May 2013

Brook’s script contains no stage directions, characters or allocation of sonnets to actors. It is simply 29 sonnets with no narrative. However, because people are meaning-makers, any 100 viewers will imagine 100 different stories.

Brook’s notion of actors with a text in an empty space has always inspired me. Simple staging accentuates the lyrical beauty and metaphorical complexity of the sonnets, allowing audience members to interpret them through their own memories, experience and imagination.