SHAKESPEARE NOW! THEATRE COMPANY PRESENTS ROMEO AND JULIET November 3 - 21, 2008 Mass. College of Art, Tower Theatre 621 Huntington Avenue Boston, MA
TICKETS: CALL 617-734-3477
Shakespeare Now! Theatre Company presents:
ROMEO AND JULIET, directed by David Wheeler
Asst. Director: Lewis Wheeler
Fight Choreography: Rob Najarian
Featuring:
Ramona Lisa Alexander -- Benvolia
Daniel Berger-Jones -- Romeo
Deborah Lake Fortson -- Nurse
Kevin Kaine -- Paris
Linda Lowy -- Lady Capulet
James Patrick Nelson -- Mercutio/Montague
Omar Robinson -- Tybalt/Friar John
Bill Salem -- Peter/Apothecary/Balthazar
Nathanael Shea -- Friar Lawrence/Prince
Lauren Sowa -- Juliet
Jim Wrynn -- Capulet
DIEGO ARCINIEGAS AND SPIRO VELOUDOS TO DIRECT FOR SHAKESPEARE NOW!
August 31, 2005 -- Spiro Veloudos, Producing Artistic Director of the Lyric Stage Company, and Diego Arciniegas, Artistic Director of Boston's Publick Theatre, wiill direct for Shakespeare Now! Theatre Company during the coming season, the company announced today.
Arciniegas will direct "Romeo and Juliet," and Veloudos will direct "Macbeth" both of which travel to schools during the company's Spring touring season.
"I'm very excited that both Diego and Spiro will join us this year," said Shakespeare Now!'s Founding Artistic Director Linda Lowy. "Through their highly individual artistic visions, they have created magnificient works of theater. We are honored to have their expert direction for our shows which will reach thousands of students across Massachusetts and New England."
As director of the Lyric and previously of the Publick Theatre, Veloudos has directed classical and contemporary theater from Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure," and "Comedy of Errors," to, most recently, Ken Ludwig's "Shakespeare in Hollywood." He is currently teaching at Emerson College.
At the Publick, Arciniegas has directed much of the Canon, from such comedies as "Twelfth Night," and "Much Ado about Nothing," to the major tragedies including, "Macbeth" and "Hamlet." He is currently an Instructor of Shakespeare at Wellesley College.
High-demand local director Daniel Gidron will helm Shakespeare Now!'s full-length production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," which will run from November 2 - 22, 2005 at Mass. College of Art in Boston., as well as travel to schools in the Spring along with the other two touring productions.
About Shakespeare Now! Theatre Company
Shakespeare Now! Theatre Company (www.shakespearenow.org), founded in 2000 by Artistic Director Linda Lowy, and based in Westwood, Mass., is a professional theater company which brings the great works of William Shakespeare to elementary, middle, and high schools in Massachusetts and the rest of southeastern New England. Workshops for students and teachers, led by the company's actor/educators, are an integral part of the company's work in schools. Shakespeare Now! also presents the Annual Boston Shakespeare Sonnet-thon at the Boston Public Library each April.
Boston Herald Event turns Bard's sonnets into music for thine ears
Theater/by Robert Nesti
Wednesday, April 2, 2003
Judges, actors, lawyers, doctors and other regular folks are teaming up tonight for the first Boston Sonnet-thon.
All 154 of Shakespeare's sonnets will be read by various volunteers at the Boston Public Library's Rabb Lecture Hall from 6 to 9 p.m. The event is free.
Sponsored by Newton-based Shakespeare Now! Theater Company, the event gives the public an opportunity to perform Shakespeare's most personal literary output.
Although the Bard is best known for his plays, his sonnets have long intrigued readers with their mysterious meanings. Who is the Dark Lady to whom he writes many of them? Are the passionate outpourings to a never-identified young man clues that Shakespeare was gay?
``I thought that would make an interesting performance event because the sonnets are very intense - they're like little gems of emotion condensed into 14 lines of iambic pentameter,'' said Linda Lowy, Shakespeare Now's artistic director, who came up with the idea for the event.
``They're very real and intimate, which makes them very wonderful to speak. You really hear his personal voice very clearly, which makes it much more personal for us when we speak them. They come directly from the heart,'' she said.
Sonnet expert Jonathan Epstein, an award-winning actor from Lenox-based Shakespeare & Company, will serve as host and traffic manager, with appearances by local actors Paula Plum and Annette Miller, director Daniel Gidron, Superior Court Judge Martha Sosman, former WCVB-TV news anchor turned lawyer Brian Leary and the city of Boston's Commissioner for Cultural Affairs, Esther Kaplan. Most of the sonnets, however, will be read by those who simply have a strong attachment to them.
``I thought it would be exciting to open it up to everybody because so many people never have the opportunity to speak Shakespeare, but would love to,'' Lowy said.
Following the program, an early birthday party for the Bard (his birthday is April 23) will take place.
``I tried to plan the event as close to Shakespeare's birthday as I could,'' Lowy said, ``but this was the only open date at the library, so I took it.''
First Annual Boston Sonnet-thon/Shakespeare Birthday Bash! Read the review below which appeared in the Boston Phoenix on April 3, 2003, and the review in Theater Mirror on April 10, 2003.
Rich in Will
Shakespeare Sonnet-thon
BY JEFFREY GANTZ
Three hours spent sitting in an auditorium and listening to Shakespeare’s sonnets might seem calculated to put Sominex out of business, but there were no sleepyheads at the first Sonnet-thon, which the Shakespeare Now! Theatre Company organized at the Boston Public Library last night (April 2). "When I do count the clock that tells the time," Will writes in #12; in the BPL’s Rabb Lecture Hall, however, the clockwatchers were hoping bloody-tyrant Time would devour slower, not faster, as Shakespeare Now! director Linda Lowy and the evening’s "Sonnet Master," Jonathan Epstein of Shakespeare and Company, tried to get all 154 of the Bard’s sonnets read before the BPL’s 9 p.m. closing hour.
The concept for this free event was simple: put out the word and invite people to sign up to read. The Shakespeare Now! company, which takes the Bard around to area high-school students, provided a core of actor-readers, and by the time the event kicked off, at 6 p.m., nearly all of the sonnets had been claimed. Shakespeare at short notice is not my specialty, but I pitched in and took #82, "I grant thou wert not married to my Muse."
Epstein was not only master but masterful, filling in for readers who didn’t show up (he appears to have memorized the lot) and providing both context and chuckles. He categorized #5 ("Those hours that with gentle work did frame") as the Artificial Insemination Sonnet and #71 ("No longer mourn for me when I am dead") as the Jewish Mother Sonnet; the audience erupted when it heard the first line of the latter, whereupon Jami Rogers cheerfully started over. Suzie Sims-Fletcher prefaced #32 ("If thou survive my well-contented day") with "My Oscar political statement: there should be more opportunities to wear tiaras," to which Epstein added, "Yes, and wouldn’t Michael Moore have looked better in one!" When no reader for #18 came forward, Epstein created a back-and-forth with an audience member to whom he assigned the role of a petulant Southampton: "You never write about me." "Yes I do." "You never write about me." "Yes I do." "You never write about me." "Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? . . . " The substitute reader for #19 (I think it was David Dooks) began, "I have to follow that?"
We heard #27 ("Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed") in two quite different performances from Sonya Hamlin, and #100 ("Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget’st so long") in English and an excellent Italian translation from Marco Zanelli. An impromptu (?) quartet turned up for #121 (" ’Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed"), and the recital turned into a revel, despite the confusion between "level" and "bevel." A young black woman, Sonya Raye, gave new meaning to #127 ("In the old age black was not counted fair"). Epstein, after an impassioned recitation of #129 ("Th’expense of spirit in a waste of shame"), was conscripted into being Exhibit A for Doug Bowen-Flynn’s #130 ("My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun").
The readers matched the sonnets for inexhaustible variety. Some recited, some read; some galloped, some dawdled; some were nervous, some chewed the nonexistent scenery. Not everyone conveyed the weight of Shakespeare’s rhymed line endings, and it was instructive to hear how easily and often the Bard’s words came out different (no wonder the texts of the plays are such a muddle). But Epstein and Lowy (whom he saluted as "the onlie begetter of this sonnet evening") kept the proceedings moving. In the end, after dropping a half-dozen sonnets whose readers didn’t appear, and with the gracious cooperation of the BPL staff, #154 ("The little Love-god lying once asleep") concluded the evening at 9:10 p.m., everyone joining in on the final line, "Love’s fire heats water; water cools not love." This Sonnet-thon was love’s labor’s won; it should join the Boston Theater Marathon as an annual April event. Issue Date: April 3, 2003 Back to the Theater table of contents.
Review in Theater Mirror by Carl Rossi, April 10, 2003
The theatre event of the year took place at the Boston Public Library on a cold, wet April evening. There were no sets or costumes; the only props were books held in hand; the performers far outnumbered the audience; the readings ranged from ringing declamation to grade-school recital, along with the growing suspense of racing against the clock, for the Library closed at nine. Happily, the staff allowed the extra time needed to bring the evening to a proper close and after all had chanted the final line, “Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love,” nearly all of Shakespeare’s Sonnets had been read aloud at this, the First Annual Boston Sonnet-thon. The event was sponsored by Shakespeare Now! Theatre Company, which brings live Shakespeare performances to Massachusetts schools. The Sonnet-Master was Jonathan Epstein, a renowned actor, teacher and director from the Lenox-based Shakespeare & Company.
These one hundred and fifty-four Sonnets have fascinated and frustrated scholars for centuries: the Poet, of course, is Shakespeare himself (1564-1616); the golden Friend is generally acknowledged to be Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton (15731624) --- but who are the Rival Poet and, especially, the Dark Lady? All that remains are those enigmatic Sonnets: keys, minus their locks. Shakespeare wrote his Sonnets for Southampton alone (c.1592-95); they were published in 1609 --- not by Shakespeare’s hand, but by one Thomas Thorpe who had received the Sonnets from Sir William Harvey (the “W. H.” of T. T.’s dedication), the third and final husband of Southampton’s mother. The Sonnets, of course, can simply be enjoyed as Shakespeare’s thoughts on love, friendship, sex, betrayal, jealousy and forgiveness; many readers know only the more famous, anthologized ones (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (No. 18); “When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes….” (No. 29); “When my love swears that she is made of truth / I do believe her, though I know she lies,” (No. 138), etc.), but to read all of them or, here, to listen to them in sequence reveals a drama as gripping and as moving as anything the Bard wrote for the stage:
A middle-aged Poet-Playwright --- married, sired, and financially strapped --- is hired by the Patron’s mother to convince her son into honoring a pre-arranged marriage (the Patron, you see, prefers boys to girls); thus, the Poet must lead his young benefactor to the altar with his honeyed words. As the Sonnets --- coaxing, teasing, or admonitory --- start to accumulate, a loving intimacy springs up between the two men. (Does their intimacy cross into the physical? Personally, I think not; their relationship is as chaste and platonic as the Poet’s affair with the Dark Lady is as tormented and physical --- a perfect balance.) A Rival Poet (Christopher Marlowe?) competes for the Patron’s favors but soon vanishes from the scene (Marlowe was killed in a tavern brawl in 1593). Enter the Dark Lady --- the Poet’s brunette mistress --- who becomes involved with the Patron (who seduces who?), leaving the Poet out in the cold and feeling his age. He forgives his friend, but their intimacy is forever altered; he is driven to jealous rages over his Lady’s inconstancy and in the end finds peace by severing all ties with her. The Sonnets are but the topsoil of this emotional landscape. No wonder Shakespeare himself never published them. As A. L. Rowse wrote, “They were too close to the bone.”
The Sonnet-Thon was more a “Shakespeare Birthday Bash” (its subtitle) than a plumbing of the Sonnets’ depths, though Mr. Epstein did provide fascinating and, at times, amusing insights along the way (No. 5 was dubbed the “artificial insemination” Sonnet; No. 21 is where Bard and Earl are “thinking about doing it”; by Sonnet 33, “they’re doing it”; No. 77: “the reason my poems are boring is because I’m writing about YOU”; etc.). Sadly, Mr. Epstein was soon forced to rein in his thoughts to compete against that rampant thief Time; the silver thread he had begun to string each Sonnet on began to fray at No. 80 and eventually snapped, leaving the remainder to scatter across the stage as marbles, beads and pearls --- by No. 134, things grew quite rushed, indeed. Pity --- I would have welcomed Mr. Epstein’s thoughts on the Dark Lady.
Those trained to speak the speech came off the best, of course, led by the sweet, goofy Mr. Epstein himself, who was called upon to fill in for absentees; he was followed close behind by Marya Lowry (Nos. 47 and 147), the wonderful Chorus of last year’s HENRY V in the Commons (she remains my “golden trumpet warmed by the sun”); Linda Lowy (No. 120), Shakespeare Now!’s Artistic Director, whose (onstage) fury made me wonder what her Medea would be like; Anne Gottlieb (No. 90), a veritable Dark Lady herself; Edwin Beschler (No. 94), ever gentle, ever charming; Jessica Burke in two contrasting styles (Nos. 89 and 126) proved she is far more bewitching when she doesn’t try to be; and if the halls had rafters, the dashing Geoffrey Stuart (No. 60) would certainly have rung them. Among the others making lovely sounds were Birgit Huppuch (Nos. 50 and 87); Jennifer Lafleur (No. 59); Ditta Lowy (No. 41); Barbara Papesch (No. 34); Beth Phillips (No. 37); Nanette Savides (No. 95); and Elizabeth Wightman (No. 24); and newcomer Sonya Raye walked off with the evening by way of her sassy spin on No. 127 (“In the old age black was not counted fair….”). There were some novelties: Sonya Hamlin performed No. 27, twice (first, wearily; second; lively); Marco Zanelli recited No. 100 in both English and Italian; Suzie Sims-Fletcher sported a tiara for her No. 32; Ayisha Knight “signed” No. 38; Doug Bowen-Flynn turned No. 138 into a comedy duet with Mr. Epstein, the latter becoming the former’s mistress whose “eyes are nothing like the sun”; John Boller, with time running out, dashed through No. 139 at hilarious speed and was still understandable; and, in a sobering moment, Mr. Epstein based his No. 57 on the hollow-voiced recitation of one of his past students: a woman who had been through an abusive relationship and had brought chilling insight to “Being your slave, what should I do but tend / Upon the hours and times of your desire?” Plus, there was a mouse --- yes: a real, live MOUSE that twice scurried about in stage left’s corners and made its exits as silently as its entrances.
During the evening, a book of Sonnets was passed about for each participant to sign on his or her appointed page(s); a few never got to do so, hence the [???]s in the listing up above --- but, then, this being the Sonnets, those gaps are only fitting, no?
Will the be another Sonnet-thon next year? If so, how would it be conducted? I would love to see the entire cycle treated as such --- a cycle with, say, a dozen actors performing sets of Sonnets that have a rise-and-fall arch; perhaps Mr. Epstein could then contribute his thoughts in full. Recitation would need to be orchestrated; the timing must be tightened --- and some appropriate music wouldn’t hurt. We could be talking a four-hour performance here (Time would need to be turned out of doors) but some of Shakespeare’s plays can run just as long when uncut, and those who love their Bard know ‘tis always wise to curb one's liquids and to bring along a cushion.
"The First Annual Boston Sonnet-thon" (2 April)
SHAKESPEARE NOW! THEATRE COMPANY
BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY
Copley Square, BOSTON, MA
Shakespeare Now! on the Radio -- Live!
WBZ 1030 AM The Jordan Rich Show Friday, October 19, 2001: 12:00 midnight - 1:00am
Shakespeare Now! will perform excerpts from its current traveling school production, "Scenes from the Great Tragedies," a compilation of scenes from Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and Hamlet. Join us for live call-in radio show, great chat about the Bard, and give-away prizes for "trivia" questions! Sample trivia questions below:
In what country does the Scottish play take place?
Which character says, "My bounty is as boundless as the sea/the more I give to thee, the more I have/for both are infinite."?
Name two plays by Shakespeare which feature women named "Portia".
What color is Oberon's flower in "A Midsummer Night's Dream"?
WERS 88.9 FM Standing Room Only Saturday, October 27, 2001 at 11:00a.m.
Shakespeare Now! will perform excerpts from "Scenes from the Great Tragedies," and discuss the company's work in schools around Massachusetts. Join cast members Matthew Ellis, Linda Lowy, Melissa Sine, Gregory Stuart, Krysta Zeiset, Patrick Zeller, and director Dev Luthra on Boston's very popular Saturday morning radio program, broadcast live from Emerson College.