Trek through Shakespeare’s universe with the Shakespeare Company’s ‘Boar’s Head’ production
By Abbas Hussain, December 15 2025—
The Shakespeare Company, established in 1995 in Calgary, Alberta, is a theatre company that seeks to bring classical theatre and works of Shakespeare to life. While also sharing the power, passion and playfulness of Shakespeare with everyone. In an interview with the Gauntlet, Allison Weninger, the director of the “Boar’s Head,” walked us through how the play was composed.
“‘The Boar’s Head’ is an adaptation of the Shakespeare plays Henry IV, parts one and two, and it is about the crown prince Hal and the friendships he has with the people at the Boar’s Hut Tavern. [It’s about] what those relationships mean to him as he becomes King,” Weninger said.
In terms of challenges, Weninger says that part of the challenge was adapting the play itself. This play fuses together two Shakespeare plays, which makes it about six hours’ worth of text from both original plays to put together into an hour show. What also added to the challenge is that this play primarily takes place at the Boar’s Head Tavern, while a lot of the original Henry IV play takes place elsewhere, so transporting some of the original play to the new venue was a challenge. It was a lot of filling in gaps to build one cohesive narrative.
The production was originally launched at the beginning of this year. Weninger talks about what has changed from that original first draft. When working on the second scene, which is the longest at about 20 minutes long, some things stayed the same while some changed. The beat of the scene was changed because the show needed a different intent. There’s actually more context that happens before this scene to set it up.
“The longer that I work on any project, […] the greater your gaps of understanding with my depth of understanding becomes,” Weninger said.
An example of this is that she heard a line that was never said in that way before, the line being, “when you’re king, will you hang a thief.”
Now, Weninger is talking about the way that this line could be interpreted; whether you would hang the thieves as a judge, or an executioner.
“The more you hear things in terms of frequency, the more you hear things in terms of depth of understanding, and that’s what I find really rewarding in working on Shakesphere,” Weninger said.
In terms of what Weninger is looking forward to, she says that she’s looking forward to people seeing it and to having an audience. This is an immersive show, and it’s quite challenging to set up the tools of immersion without having to challenge the people there.
She also talks about the venue, which is the Eau Claire Distillery located in Diamond Valley. A beautiful wooden building with a fantastic arched roof, which feels really evocative and mesmerizing once you step inside.
More about the Shakespeare Company can be found on their website, and the Boar’s Head runs from November 28th to December 6th.
More details about the play can be found here.