www.rudemechanicals.com (301)317-9438
January 30, 2002
For immediate release
The Rude Mechanicals are proud to announce their eighth show, William Shakespeare’s immortal “Romeo & Juliet”. Directed by Jaki Demarest and Brett Estey.
April 26 & 27, May 3 & 4 at 8 PM
Laurel High School
8000 Cherry Lane, Laurel, MD
May 10 & 11 at 8 PM, May 12 at 2 PM
Greenbelt Arts Center
Greenbelt, MD
Admission: $10 for adults, $8 for seniors and students
(301)317-9438 for reservations and directions
What would you sacrifice for love? And what can be said about Romeo and Juliet that hasn’t been said in the last four hundred years?
Plenty. Take the old classic we’ve seen in Renaissance settings dozens of times, and strip it down to its barest components, giving it a black box postmodern set that starves the eye for color and focuses everything on the actors themselves. Tell the story from the point of view of Benvolio, the only surviving member of the younger generation. Like Romeo and Juliet, he sacrifices everything for love, including love itself, but unlike them he’s a realist and a survivor, living day to day in the aftermath, trying to pick up the pieces.
Take Capulet and Lady Capulet and combine them into a single mother, a powerful, cold, controlling figure, remote and untouchable. Juliet’s mother, Tybalt’s lover, unable to truly connect with either one. Make Mercutio a woman, Benvolio’s lover, driving herself rapidly over the edge of self-immolation with a drug addiction she can no longer control.
The conflict between the Montagues and Capulets is secondary to the deeper and more destructive division between the generations. The fundamental powerlessness of the younger generation fuels the tragedy; Romeo and Juliet are alternately compelled and manipulated by parents and authority figures into a shrinking and increasingly destructive series of choices. In the end, their only choice, their only freedom, is death.
Romeo & Juliet is the perfect choice of a play for this particular troupe. It burns brilliantly with the passions and frustrations of youth, and the Rude Mechanicals are artistic rebels at heart. And we’re drawing an audience of like-minded rebels, sophisticated and savvy. We’re a forum for challenging ideas, for lovers of Shakespeare, for method workshops, for love of the craft, for theater that truly “holds the mirror up to nature.”
“The Rude Mechanicals,” to quote the Washington Post’s Michael Toscano, “are neither. [They] have set a high standard for making the classics available to local audiences.” We want to take the classics we love and make you see in them all the life, humor, grief and fire that we do. If we have a single driving creed, for acting and for life, it’s that anything worth doing is worth doing well.
Thank you, and we hope to see you there.