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Captured at the Royal Exchange Theatre where it played to sell-out crowds, King Lear: The Film starred Don Warrington MBE in the title role.
The film was released on the BBC iPlayer, via the Shakespeare Lives international platform, educational screenings in 13 cinemas and finally in a BBC 4 Christmas screening and Sundae looked after the communications campaign for the film in its entirety.
We generated a bespoke publicity campaign that focussed on achieving cut through into all TV listings, national features and relevant social channels.
Throughout the campaign we placed huge importance on thinking outside of the box; focusing on the partnership with Talawa and the all black casting of the production as well as the fact that Don Warrington’s Lear in fact had dementia – Alfred Enoch undertook interviews on the topic of the lack of roles for black actors in the UK in HuffPost and Metro and we pitched and facilitated a feature to the Daily Express on the portrayal of Dementia in television to tie in with the Christmas screening.
As part of our wider campaign we gained support from charities such as Alzheimer’s UK and the Lewy Body society who published articles on their websites and supported the campaign on social media.
We also placed further national launch coverage including Daily Mail, Digital Spy, BBC News and The Stage and the BBC 4 screening, on Christmas Day, was previewed by a large number of outlets including Sunday Times: Culture, Daily Telegraph, i, Financial Times, Sunday Express, Daily Mail, What’s on TV, Total TV Guide and the Times.
(Images: King Lear: The Film / Jonathan Keenan / publicity shots)
You can do Shakespeare with black actors without it having to be set in Africa.
As close to definitive as can be.
