Reimagining Shakespeare

This is William Shakespeare's, the Taming of the Shrew. A lot of people are intimidated by the very idea of Shakespeare, they think, "Oh, I don't want to go to that. It's going to be long. It's going to be boring. I won't understand it." We've trimmed it down so that the running time is pretty compact. And we've added some music and some dance numbers and so forth. We've also updated the setting. We're still in the rehearsal room. It's a pretty spare space. The set is just taped out on the floor. We have some cubes and some chairs. When we move over to the studio theater, we'll be on the set. It's a pretty wild world that we've imagined. It's big and bold and bright and colorful. "T'is hatched and shall be so." Even though this play was written in 1594. It looks a lot like 1964, and of course, we're performing it here in 2024. I'm playing Katherine Minola, who is known to be shrewish, very wild, very abrasive, and most everyone in the area is scared of her. I play Tranio. She's just so woman empowering. Like she knows how to, like, stand her ground. She kind of, like, bosses around her master cause he doesn't know what he's doing. I want it to be fresh and accessible, and I want people to come out of that going, "Wait. That was a Shakespeare play. I loved it. I had so much fun. I knew what was going on. And I have responses. I have questions, I have ideas. I have reactions that I'd love to engage with my community about." That's my goal. Shakespeare for everyone.