INCOGNITA ENTERPRISES: Award-winning Film, Theatre & Digital productions in Melbourne, AustraliaShakespeare Projects

ABOUT SALLY McLEAN’S WORK WITH SHAKESPEARE

Sally McLean is the Creator/Director and one of the lead ensemble members of the multi award-winning digital series Shakespeare Republic which has been officially selected and screened at over 110 international film festivals, nominated for over 100 awards and won over 60 awards to date including Best Director, Best Web Series, Best Actress (for Sally personally) and Best Ensemble Cast in numerous festivals and industry awards. A highlight was being the recipient of the prestigious CINE Golden Eagle Award for Best Digital Series in the USA in 2017, which saw Sally join the ranks of fellow CINE alumni such as Steven Spielberg (the then CINE President) Oprah Winfrey, Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese, Jim Henson, Mike Nichols, Robert Altman, Spike Lee, Billy Crystal, Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese and Sydney Pollack, among others. Fellow award winners that year were Christian Slater’s Mr Robot, Variety’s Actors on Actors and National Geographic’s MARS series.

Another highlight was winning the Best Film Award at the 2020 Falstaff Awards in the USA for Shakespeare Republic Season Three, decided by a jury of academics from around the world. Fellow nominees included Shakespeare’s Globe broadcast program, Canada’s Stratford Festival broadcast series, the international hit streaming series The Show Must Go Online and the UK’s National Theatre Live at Home program. Previous winners of this award include the BBC’s Hollow Crown series, Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing and Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth starring Michael Fassbender & Marion Cotillard.

Shakespeare Republic would go on to be named the Most Awarded Anthology Series in the world & ranked as the #6 Web Series globally in the 2021 Web Series World Cup, as decided by the amount of awards the season received from the top web series festivals worldwide. The series was acquired for the official collection of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia in 2018 and named as an “Acquisition Highlight” in the NFSA’s 2018/19 Annual Report. The third season of the series was acquired and added to the official collection at the NFSA in 2020.

Her Shakespeare short film, Speaking Daggers, a spin off from the series, was selected for 22 international film festivals, including the Academy Award® accredited St Kilda Film Festival – and won 3 awards, as well as a “Highly Commended” Finalist nod from Sir Kenneth Branagh in his role as Jury President for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s Shakespeare Shorts Film Festival in the UK in 2017.

As well as directing and adapting the works, she appears on screen in both projects alongside Nadine Garner, Michala Banas, Alan Fletcher, Scott Major, Christopher Kirby and Dean Haglund, among others.

Her work with Shakespeare Republic has been the subject of several academic presentations and plenary panels at Early Modern Literature and Shakespeare seminars and conferences in Australia, the UK and USA from 2016 to now. Her first published work on Shakespeare, an essay exploring her methodology behind Shakespeare Republic and Shakespeare performance in general, was published in the USA by Routledge Press in 2020 as part of the academic essay collection, Playfulness In Shakespearean Adaptations. The third season of Shakespeare Republic has been taught at Syracuse University, USA, discussed in papers presented at the Shakespeare Association of America Conference (USA) and BritGrad Conference (UK) and is also further explored in the Arden Shakespeare collection, Lockdown Shakespeare: New Evolutions in Performance and Adaptation, published by Bloomsbury Press in the UK in July 2022.

In 2021, Sally was commissioned by Howard Fine Acting Studio Australia to create, write and direct a student Shakespeare web series, Walking Shadows. The series ran for three seasons, winning several international awards, with the final season released in September 2024.

A second spin-off from Shakespeare Republic, the limited short form series, Dark Arcadia, is currently on the international film festival circuit. Also created, adapted, directed and starring Sally in the role of “Hecate MacFindlay”, funded by Creative Victoria, City of Melbourne, Creative Partnerships Australia and the British Shakespeare Association, the series has garnered several awards and nominations including Best Series, as well as Best Director and Best Screenplay for Sally personally.

Sally’s experience as a Shakespearean actor and director and thoughts on Shakespeare performance in the 21st Century in general were also featured in the book Shakespeare & The Actor through interviews with Professor Emerita, British Shakespeare Association Honorary Fellow and author Lois Potter, alongside actors such as Sir Ian McKellen, Dame Judi Dench, Sir Kenneth Branagh and Sir Antony Sher, among others. The book was published by Oxford University Press in September 2022.