7 Life Lessons I Learned from Unrehearsed Shakespeare - Guest Post by Katie Trupiano

One of our awesome actresses from our 2016 Tour wrote a wonderful blog post on her site (www.katietrupiano.com/artventures) and we loved it so much that we asked to share it on our Blog!
Enjoy!

I’ve been trying to work out exactly what I've been doing for the past three weeks as I've worked on the Unrehearsed Shakespeare Project with the New Renaissance Theatre Company. It's hard to put into words because quite frankly, most of the performances are fuzzy messes in my brain.  But I knew I wanted to blog about my experience so this is the most coherent I can be about it for now (a week after we've closed the show).  

 1. Sex jokes are always funny.  

And Shakespeare is the king of sex jokes.  

 2. You will mess up.  Do so loudly and proudly.

This was/is the most difficult for this type-A actor to swallow.  I like to be super prepared when I walk onstage and I try to be the best scene partner I can be for my colleagues.  USP encourages you to be prepared and be a good scene partner, but when your Shakespeare script is only seven pages long for a two hour show, you're limited in what you actually have control over.  And in fact, messing up is part of the technique, because it happens all. the. time.  And the audience loves it!  And as a teaching artist, I encourage my students to fail on an almost daily basis.  So this experience was a healthy dose of my own medicine.  And it was fun.  In case you didn't know, failure IRL is not always fun and you won't always be cheered when you cry out for help, but exercising your failure muscles certainly do ease the sting. 

3. Don't just sit behind the scenes.  Go out and see what's happening around you.

USP encourages the actors to go out in the audience and watch the show when they have a moment.  Ten minutes between your scenes?  Go watch the show for a while!  I think that the theater world can be intense because we all get caught up in this idea that we have to be busy all the time establishing our careers.  "What are you working on now?  What's next?"  I DON'T KNOW I JUST WANT TO STAY AT HOME WITH MY WINE BOTTLE AND HUSBAND OKAY?  We have to remember it's okay to step back and be a human and be in the actual world instead of just the world of your play (which is glorious and wonderful, but so is the actual world!).  Go see your friend's play.  Go see the new art exhibit.  Travel.  Meet someone new.  These experiences will only enhance your performance the next time you make an entrance.

4. Sometimes you just need to have a dance break. 

5. If you want someone to do something, say so.

If you know me personally, you know I can be "bossy."  If you don't know me personally, I can be "bossy."  Part of this stems from my only-child-syndrome and the other part of this comes from my love of reading feminist articles that tell me to speak up for myself.  The awesome thing?  Shakespeare's characters are bossy, too, and they get it done.  #work.  Oberon wants his changeling boy?  Boom.  Tells Puck what to do.  Quince is directing a play?  Boom.  Tells the mechanicals where and when to rehearse and how to do it.  It's okay to speak up for yourself and it's okay to ask someone to help you.  We should, in fact, be doing more of this.

6. And listen when someone tells you to do something.

When those directions get thrown at you, you do it.  You support your friends and help them out, or else you make them look like a fool (which is, sometimes, a choice).  We all have those moments when we're not fully listening.  I probably say to someone once a week, "I heard you, but I wasn't listening to you."  (Hey, at least I'm honest!).  During USP, I was the best listener ever!  I was waiting for those hints, waiting to be told how to help my scene partner.  Fun fact: People are dropping these hints all the time about how we can help them and if we listen carefully enough, we can support them.

7. Suit the action to the word.  

AKA: practice what you post/preach, walk the talk, do as you say, etc, etc, etc.  This idea has never been more important to our current world, and resounds loudly in my head allllll the time.

Thank you so so so so so much to everyone who came out to support this production.  You all are wonderful.  If you missed it, there's going to be an abbreviated performance at Britsburgh on September 10.  In the meantime, go see some awesome theater that is happening in Pittsburgh this summer!!!   

- Katie Trupiano

The Unrehearsed Shakespeare Project - Guest Post by Marceau Deschamps-Ségura

Here is Marceau Deschamps-Ségura's follow up blog post to his earlier 'A Most Expected Journey (to Shakespeare!)' about his time visiting Pittsburgh (from Paris) and working with Elizabeth Ruelas & Andy Kirtland of The New Renaissance Theatre Company's Unrehearsed Shakespeare Project.  Marceau took part in our Unrehearsed Cue Script Technique two-day workshop with the rest of our cast and had text sessions with each of the directors - all as part of his PhD Studies at Université de Poitiers. 

           This time with Elizabeth Ruelas and Andy Kirtland was a great pleasure, and I think I learned a lot working with them. The first thing that struck me was the way they manage to build a team within the very short time of the workshop (only two days!). Almost all of us were meeting for the first time, and they now are going to perform the two plays this month, with no more rehearsals together than fight rehearsal. That capacity of team-building is very precious for that kind of form which aims to go very deep very fast: deep into Shakespeare’s words, deep into theatre, and deep into each of the actors. I am more used to long rehearsal periods or of group work, and that kind of hurry was very refreshing and life-affirming! Yes, we can do great things in just a short time! And Shakespeare might be a great example to have in mind for that!

            The way Elizabeth Ruelas and Andy Kirtland directed us was very interesting for me, too. We had both a lot of work and a lot of fun. They managed all the time to be friendly and firm. They made it very precise what we were working on, and how much time we would have for that, but they would smoothly change their plan if they saw that any of us would need it, so I had the feeling we were taking our time despite the swiftness. They were really driving us to the places they wanted to, but in the same time paid a lot attention to each of us during the process. I hope I will take the benefits of that experience, as a director.

            Concerning the Cue Script Technique itself, the experience overcame the theory of it. The feeling, as an actor, to be on stage, looking for my cue, and paying attention in the same time to the movements, the stage directions given by the text, is an essential part of acting, for me. It increases the attention the actor pays to both the text – its details, how it works, and how to make it obvious and thrilling for the audience – and the stage, that is to say the space, one’s own place, and the relationship to the other actors and the audience. Most of the qualities necessary to improvise are there and make the play very vivid, build the actors’ and the audience’s pleasure; those qualities meet the qualities of text-theatre, with the secure presence of a great author’s words and story to help them to elaborate a great moment. Indeed, the Cue Script Technique makes it understandable how Shakespeare’s plays came to be so efficient, in spite of their complexity, and with such a little time of common rehearsal – if any – they had. It is now obvious for me that I couldn’t set, nor read, an Elizabethan play without paying a great attention to those points we worked on: each actor’s having only his own part; the cues, and the author would use false or repeated cues to trick the actors, and make them feel as the characters do; suiting the Action to the Word and the Word to the Action; the way the verse is used to understand the emotional state of the character, thanks to irregularities in the number of beats; how the actors crossing the stage and addressing directly to the audience makes the action lively and clear; the information the First Folios might give about the pronunciation and action. During the text sessions, all of those points were made very clear, as well as the plenty of puns and references Shakespeare would spread in his plays, and that Elizabeth Ruelas and Andy Kirtland were qualified to explain. Moreover, these two directors would give us the tools and methods to plainly understand our roles, in order to perform it with pleasure and matter; each of them having his and her own personal approach of Shakespeare through these common rules. Eventually, the main thing I will retain from that experience, is that to enable the audience to get the complexity of Shakespeare’s texts, their subtle or trivial puns and simple or tangled story-lines, the first thing to do is to make those plays as entertaining as they used to be. And that can be an efficient way to do it thanks to all of those rules and codes that would be used at the moment they were written, just as Elizabeth Ruelas and Andy Kirtland do with the New Renaissance Theatre Company and the Unrehearsed Shakespeare Project – bringing in their own point of view, humour and fantasy.

 - Compte-rendu de Marceau Deschamps-Ségura

Part Two of The Teaching, the Directing, the Passion

Here is the continuation of my first blog post ‘The Teaching, the Directing, the Passion' about my recent studies at Shakespeare’s Globe Directing Masterclasses.  I took pages of notes, but wanted to distil them all into a one paragraph summary for each of the two days of classes.  Although this post is brief, I hope it will inspire you to keep learning about whatever subject thrills you.  As Albert Einstein said: ‘Once you stop learning, you start dying.’

 

Day 2, Sunday:

Today mostly took place in Sackler Studios (as did some of Day 1) as well as in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.  Our first class of the day was with Sarah Case for ‘Voice.’  This lovely woman led us through some vocal exercises and helped to integrate the importance of breath and voice.  One of my favorite quotes from Ms. Case was ‘Breath is everything - it drives the voice.  Without breath you have no voice.’  This is so important in Shakespeare.  There are many long thoughts and some difficult passages, so if your diaphragm isn’t properly supported – you won’t be able to give them justice.  We also got to ‘Breath the Space’ in the playhouse, which was making sounds and saying lines from various places around the space.  This is a very good exercise for getting actors to work together as a company, which is precisely what we want to achieve with our ensemble at The New Renaissance Theatre Company.  Too soon, it was time for lunch, and I wish this session could have gone on for a bit longer, of course.  After lunch, we met with Simone Coxall for ‘Movement in Theatre’, which was amazing!  For the classes this weekend, we focused on The Tempest Act 1 Scene II.  Ms. Coxall helped us to get grounded to the floor and used the brilliant analogy of imagining ‘roots growing from our feet into the floor.’  We did a lot of exercises to help us delve into the three main characters of the scene: Prospero, Caliban and Ariel.  Eventually, we used all of our work from the beginning of the class to bring the text to life.  I have such a problem getting out of my head, but Ms. Coxall inspired me to have fun and to ‘not be afraid to fail.’  This class split its time between the studios and the playhouse like the Voice class, as well.  In the playhouse, we really got to explore movement as the three characters on the stage – using every bit.  She also taught us to ‘not play the obstacle, but do what you need to do to overcome it.’  Towards the end of our session, I even got to portray Prospero in a bit of movement work with a fellow classmate as Caliban.  It was so much fun to play! 

Finally, class was over (sadly) and we all met with Rob Swain for ‘Plenary’ and to tell him what a wonderful experience this was for us.  I really hope I get the opportunity to work with them all again.  The Higher Education Team were so kind and helpful.  After some hugs and goodbyes, I zipped over to the line for Groundlings with my ticket for A Midsummer Night’s Dream in my hand.  This was Emma Rice’s first production as The Shakespeare’s Globe new Artistic Director.  I wasn’t going to miss that!

-Elizabeth Ruelas, Artistic Director of The New Renaissance Theatre Company (which produces The Unrehearsed Shakespeare Project)

 

Pictured below: My traveling companion Balzac near the entrance to The Globe Theatre & Sackler Studios

 

 

The Teaching, the Directing, the Passion

I recently had the extremely good fortune to be ‘hand-picked’ to take Directing Masterclasses at Shakespeare’s Globe in London.  I met such brilliant, warm, wonderful people in my instructors and my fellow classmates.  It’s reignited my passion for directing and teaching so much that I want more!  So, here is just a very tiny bit of how my too brief weekend of Globe classes went:

Day 1, Saturday:

Introductions with Rob Swain brought us into the beautiful Sam Wanamaker Playhouse where I pulled out my notebook to begin taking notes.  The lovely actor Dickon Tyrrell was our instructor for ‘An Actor’s Perspective’ where he told us what it was like playing in this beautiful space as well as in the Globe theatre.  He said the mistake an actor could make in the indoor playhouse was ‘going too intimate’ and that actors should ‘play it like you’re in the Globe’.  Then we were given an extensive tour of the playhouse from Hell to the Heavens!  I couldn’t agree more with Mr. Tyrrell’s advice about how ‘Shakespeare is the director’ and that there is ‘no generalized emotion in Shakespeare’.  As a Historically Informed Practice director myself, these are the same things I tell my actors, as well as my students in the workshops that I teach.  Then we met with director Jacqui Somerville for ‘A Director Prepares,’ who taught us about how important a support system is.  I couldn’t agree more.  We also learned Ms. Somerville’s process for her preparation and research and how she works with directors.  One of my favorite things that she said was: ‘Don’t spoon-feed actors. Empower them.’  So inspirational!

After lunch, we met with Simon Dormandy for our ‘Text and Language’ course.  Such a fun discussion with my fellow Shakespeareans!  One of my favorite quotes from Mr. Dormandy was ‘If it’s difficult to say, don’t make it easy.’  Going back to what Mr. Tyrrell said earlier in the day about how ‘Shakespeare is the director’:  Shakespeare puts the character in the language.  If your character is given a difficult line to say – there’s a reason for it.  Perhaps your character is confused, conflicted or not sure about what he/she is saying.  Don’t try to ‘fix’ the line.  Just say it and see what happens.  Then we got into text and pauses and got to get on our feet to work on lines.  I was fortunate to read a bit of Olivia from Twelfth Night aloud using what we had learned. 

Before we knew it, class was over.  But all of us directing students wanted more. Shakespeare and directing is our passion!  Being able to learn from some of the best practitioners around was such a blessing and I wish (as did we all) it could have been longer.  Luckily, there was one more day of learning, which I’ll write about in my next blog post: ‘The Teaching, the Directing, the Passion Part II.’

Stay tuned!

-Elizabeth Ruelas, Artistic Director of The New Renaissance Theatre Company

PS: Attached are a couple of photos of my trip with my travelling companion Balzac (who you may remember from Andy Kirtland’s blog post last year: ‘A Labour of Love, or There and Back Again’) with more photos & my tweets during the weekend via #EtoGlobe.

A most expected journey (to Shakespeare!) - Guest Post by Marceau Deschamps-Ségura

This month's post is by Marceau Deschamps-Ségura, who is visiting us from Paris, France to attend our upcoming Unrehearsed Cue Script Technique with our tour cast as part of his PhD studies at Université de Poitiers:

I first met Andy Kirtland and his work with Elizabeth Ruelas on Shakespeare during a lecture day about Love's Labour's Lost at the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon. He presented the Unrehearsed Cue Script technique, and what it revealed about the play.
The interest of their work immediately struck me: using what we know about Shakespeare and its original practices seem to me a great way to find out some secrets of his texts, in order to make them efficient and powerful onstage. Andy's exposé clearly showed how the actor was informed by the stage situation and action, and how Shakespeare used the codes and practices of his own time to increase his actors' presence.
As an actor, I am very curious to experience that way to perform the text, to play with it, and to find out the clues Shakespeare left in the actors' parts to trick or help them. I am curious of the awareness, the calm and the truth it seems to demand to the actors, and that I am trying to develop each day.
As a young director, in our artistic and economical context, I really look forward exploring a different way to think about the theatrical process. Indeed, putting the focus on the stage situations, the relationship between the actors and with the audience, keeping very attentive to the here and now so as to play with it, all of these things appear to me as main qualities for an actor to have, which make the great quality of a play, and the pleasure of its audience. Moreover, I like the efficiency it implies about theatrical process: the actors are always playing, creating, exploring, from the first time they meet until the end of the tour. It's not about preparing something to give to the audience, but properly creating something singular and unique, directly under their eyes and thanks to their reactions. The whole path of creation is worth being shared, and it is interesting sharing it from its first days. I love the dream-come-true aspect of directly performing a play, in a brand new place, with brand new actors and brand new audience, without the usual inertia we often think necessary.
As a dramaturge and a PhD student, I am impatient to witness and experience on my own a historically informed technique which, I don't doubt it, will help me understand Shakespeare's plays patterns, mechanisms, atmosphere and spirit, and to make it echo with my own research about its original practices and contemporary adaptations. It is such a pleasure to me when the works of the scholars escape from their books to rush on the stage, and when the experiments of artists contribute to the reflection about what has been done and what can be done!

At last, I am really impatient to meet a couple of passionate, demanding and popular artists and their team, trying to bring to everybody a "new" way to hear those plays, as lively and frolic as they might have been, four centuries ago.

-Marceau Deschamps-Ségura

 

Father Figures in Romeo and Juliet - Lord Capulet

What follows is a second part of a larger piece that I am working on regarding the roles of the parents in The Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet. Earlier I looked at the role of Prince Eskales as a possibly fatherless father figure. Here we will take a look at the strongest of the patriarchs depicted in the play, and see how his role effects the tragedy of the young star-crossed lovers.

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The Capulets are probably the best-illustrated family unit in the entirety of Shakespeare’s theatrical canon. We have scenes between the parents and child. We see intercessions by the household servants who are like family. There is a variety to this family that makes them human, if not entirely likable. How then does this environment contribute to the tragedy of the play?

Lord Capulet speaks the first line almost every time that he enters the scene. He comes on speaking which puts the attention on him. When the Prince speaks privately to the fathers after the opening brawl, he takes Capulet away with him first. Paris, the Prince’s kinsman is wooing Capulet’s daughter. Capulet holds a feast. Capulet’s family has a large crypt. In the context of the play the Capulet family is given importance over the Montagues. The first words in the play are given to the Capulets. Lord Capulet is the strong, authoritative father figure in this tragedy.

The character is not drawn as a bad father. He protects his family. When the audience discovers that the Countie Paris wishes to marry Juliet, we first see Lord Capulet putting him off, telling him to wait because she is too young. At his great feast, he speaks well of the party-crashing Romeo, the son of his great rival and is able to keep the peace when Tibalt demands satisfaction for this insult. It is only when Tibalt is murdered that Capulet begins to force the marriage on his only living child in order to ensure her safety and the family’s prosperity, making him appear a monster in the eyes of his daughter, and a villain in the hearts of the audience.

‘Mountague is bound as well as I, / In penalty alike, and 'tis not hard I thinke, / For men so old as wee, to keepe the peace,’ he states. There is an acknowledgment of his role as a leader, due to his age and authority. However, he quickly tempers this authority with a father’s care for his daughter: ‘But wooe her gentle Paris, get her heart, / My will to her consent, is but a part, / And shee agree, within her scope of choise, / Lyes my consent, and faire according voice.’ He does not treat Juliet as chattel, and shows true care and tenderness in these lines regarding the dispensation of his daughter.

The first time we are given any exchange between Lord and Lady Capulet is after Tibalt’s death when Lord Capulet does an about-face and agrees to quickly marry Juliet off to Paris. He sends his wife to their daughter to make the case. Herein we have a glimpse as to why this concerned father is made out as the baddie in this youthful love story. This is the first time we see Juliet and her father interacting, and he cannot understand why his daughter is not agreeable to his plans. Of course, she is unaware of how he has been protecting her up to this point.

How, will she none? doth she not give us thanks?

Is she not proud? doth she not count her blest,

Unworthy as she is, that we have wrought

So worthy a Gentleman, to be her Bridegroome

…………………………………………………………………is meant Love.

How now?

How now? Chopt Logicke? what is this?

[…]

Gods bread, it makes me mad:

Day, night, houre, ride, time, worke, play,

Alone in companie, still my care hath bin

To have her matcht, and having now provided

A Gentleman of Noble Parentage,

Of faire Demeanes, Youthfull, and Nobly Allied,

Stuft as they say with Honourable parts,

Proportion'd as ones thought would wish a man,

And then to have a wretched puling foole,

A whining mammet, in her Fortunes tender,

To answer, Ile not wed, I cannot Love:

I am too young, I pray you pardon me.

                       

Here is much abuse thrown at Juliet by her father. He calls her ‘green sickness,’ ‘carrion,’ ‘baggage,’ ‘tallow face,’ ‘disobedient wretch,’ ‘wretched puling foole’ and ‘whining mammet.’ He threatens her: ‘I will drag thee, on a Hurdle thither,’ ‘My fingers itch,’ ‘you shall not house with me,’ ‘Ile nere acknowledge thee.’ His authority is lost with these insults and threats, showing instead a father whose work for his child is unappreciated. In his eyes, Juliet has no idea what machinations he has been dealing with on her behalf. Perhaps it is the very fact that he has been working without her knowledge that has put this rift between them. In Capulet’s next scene, this rift seems to be closed.

How now my headstrong,

Where have you bin gadding?

…………………………………………………………………rul'd by you.

Send for the Countie, goe tell him of this,

Ile have this knot knit up to morrow morning.

…………………………………………………………………bounds of modestie.

Why I am glad on't, this is well, stand up,

This is as't should be, let me see the County:

I marrie go I say, and fetch him hither.

Now afore God, this reveren'd holy Frier,

All our whole Cittie is much bound to him.

…………………………………………………………………there's time inough.

Go Nurse, go with her,

Weele to Church to morrow.

…………………………………………………………………now neere night.

Tush, I will stirre about,

And all things shall be well, I warrant thee wife:

Go thou to Juliet, helpe to decke up her,

Ile not to bed to night, let me alone:

Ile play the huswife for this once. What ho?

They are all forth, well I will walke my selfe

To Countie Paris, to prepare him up

Against to morrow, my heart is wondrous light,

Since this same way-ward Gyrle is so reclaim'd.

The cues here, ‘rul’d by you’ and ‘bounds of modestie,’ combined with Capulet’s responses show that Juliet has come to her senses and that as far as he is concerned, ‘This is as't should be.’ He is so happy that he offers to stay up worrying: ‘Ile not to bed to night, let me alone: / Ile play the huswife for this once.’ Having completed his duties has a father, he will now take on the role of the mother.

However, this joy is short-lived. After a few small exchanges, Capulet’s cue lines tell him all he needs to know:

…………………………………………………………………helpe, call helpe.

…………………………………………………………………shee's dead.

…………………………………………………………………O wofull time.

The death of his daughter throws him into despair, and he grieves, for his child.

Death that hath tane her hence to make me waile,

Ties up my tongue, and will not let me speake.

[…]

O Child, O Child; my soule, and not my Child,

Dead art thou, alacke my Child is dead,

And with my Child, my joyes are buried.

In his grief he does not look for solace with his wife. His lines are given to unspecified persons, or directed to his thwarted son-in-law, Paris. At this most painful time for him, the death of his daughter (of course, we in the audience have satisfaction that Juliet is not dead, and at the same time, the knowledge that she does not see this honest tenderness that her father expresses for her: another instance of the tragedy of miscommunication between father and daughter), he is alone in his suffering.

In the play’s final scene, Capulet makes several references to family. He refers to his own family by their relationship to himself, again calling Lady Capulet ‘wife’ and referring to ‘our Daughter’ and ‘my Daughter[ ]’ rather than using their names. Then surprisingly he refers to ‘Brother Montague.’ Now, with the death of both of their children, they can be brothers. They are of one generation and can understand each other.

By eventually forcing the issue of Juliet’s marriage to Paris, Lord Capulet pushes the tragedy along its path. Had he continued with the compassionate care of his daughter, letting her choose whom she liked, he still may not have allowed the marriage of Romeo and Juliet to continue, but we can only speculate on alternate endings. What is clear through the text is that there is very little meaningful communication between father and daughter in the Capulet household, a strengthening of which may have avoided quite a bit of bloodshed.

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As work continues on the prompt book and through text sessions with the cast of The Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet for NRTC’s upcoming production as part of our Unrehearsed Shakespeare Project’s 2016 tour, more will be unearthed regarding the parents and parental figures in the play and how the generation gap effects the course of the play.

-Andy Kirtland, Managing Director of The New Renaissance Theatre Company (which produces The Unrehearsed Shakespeare Project)

Our Midsommer Nights with Romeo and Juliet

Much like last year’s post Much adoe and Me, this post is about why A Midsommer Nights Dreame and The Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet (First Folio spellings) were chosen for our Unrehearsed Shakespeare Project tour this year.  To begin with, both of these plays are perfect demonstrations of almost everything the Unrehearsed Cue Script Technique offers from blocking directions to simultaneous dialogue clues.  MSND, aside from being my favorite of Shakespeare’s comedies, has countless examples of how this technique shows the audience what the characters really think about each other even though they are saying the opposite.  Using just the rules of Unrehearsed brings the Demetrius & Helena ‘follow me no more’ scene to hilarious life when the actors follow the technique’s rules of crossing.  And the play within a play scene never fails to entertain when the actors stay true to the text and do exactly as Shakespeare has written!  I don’t want to give too much away, but I’ve seen so many productions of MSND where the director feels that he/she needs to ‘add’ superfluous actions and props to make this scene funny.  It doesn’t need it.  Just stay true the text and you’re golden!  Finally, as the director of MSND, I got to do one of my favorite doublings, which is to combine the lovers, mechanicals and fairies into just four tracks.  I put together this doubling the last time I directed MSND, which adds a bit more excitement and fun for our cast as well as the audience – who get to see our versatile actors switch characters with the snap of a finger.  With the usual doubling of Puck & Philostrate, Theseus & Oberon, Hippolyta & Titania, and Egeus & Quince (Bottom has no doubling), this rounds out my cast to 9 actors onstage and 1 prompting.

As for Romeo & Juliet, that was a bit of a happy accident.  We wanted to do two plays this year and needed one that would be a dramatic contrast to MSND – while still sharing some of the same romantically tragic elements of how love (or the lack of it) affects people.  Plus, this would be an opportunity for people to see a well-known story presented in a new way, which will be illuminating in ways that more traditional productions, movies or merely reading the script are not.  Romeo & Juliet was written around the same time as MSND, and Andy Kirtland (the director) initially thought it could be performed using just 10 actors, as well (9 performing and 1 prompting).  However, after many nights of hair-pulling research, he discovered that this play does indeed need 11 people.  This is where our Apprentice idea came from, and we are thrilled to be bringing in someone to take over a track of roles for R & J as well as assist our awesome stage manager in MSND.  R & J also has that wonderful simultaneous dialogue in certain parts, if you use the Unrehearsed Cue Script Technique.  These dramatic moments of confusion and characters talking over each other are thrilling and are rarely (if ever) seen in performances!  On a personal note, R & J was the first Shakespeare play I ever read and acted in.  Even though I had a very small part as a dancer in that university production, years later it would be one of my first Unrehearsed Cue Script Technique shows with The New England Shakespeare Festival – in which I played Mercutio.

As with all of our Unrehearsed Shakespeare Project shows, each of our actors have taken on 2 or 3 tracks, which we switch around for each performance.  So, audience members who attend on multiple days will never see the exact same show twice!  Watching an Unrehearsed Cue Script Technique production brings Shakespeare’s plays to life in ways that people don’t usually get to see.  Our theatre company cares about the story and staying true to the text, which comes through in the high quality performances and audience reaction.  I am thrilled to be bringing our 3^rd year’s tour to Allegheny Parks again and look forward to bringing our fun and energetic shows there for many years to come.

-Elizabeth Ruelas, Artistic Director of The New Renaissance Theatre Company (which produces The Unrehearsed Shakespeare Project)