Award-winning director Tara Notcutt was nothing but a twinkle in her mother’s eye when I was studying The Taming of the Shrew as a setwork at an all-girls high school. Brilliant English teachers who spoke with well-rounded vowels and rolling Rs guided us, but I used to find the voices of the girls reading the men’s parts in the play incongruous. Now, three decades later, Notcutt is directing the same content with a 17-strong all-female cast and crew — and I not only enjoy watching them rehearse but laugh at their attempts to stifle their responses to fellow actors’ interpretations. Notcutt also matriculated from an all-girls school. It is down the road from Maynardville Open-Air Theatre in Wynberg, Cape Town, where she’ll present her 50th show this February. For her, the occasion is both surreal and serendipitous. She is half the age of the theatre that has been home to Shakespearean productions for 62 years, and it’s a decade since she graduated from university, "doing something I ...
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