TSC's ROMEO AND JULIET Opens 4/27

Tennessee Shakespeare Company, the Mid-South's professional classical theatre, returns to its outdoor roots with its multi-stage production of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet at the Dixon Gallery & Gardens this spring.

Romeo and Juliet is TSC's inaugural Mid-South touring production and its first performance staged in Memphis. The show will run April 27 - May 8 under the stars on the south lawn of the Dixon, located at 4339 Park Avenue. It also will tour to 12 area schools with accompanying playshops and residencies.

Parking is free, audience chairs will be provided, and pre-show picnicking on the lawn is encouraged beginning at two hours before showtime.

The production will open on the portico of the Dixon mansion (where two houses are "both alike in dignity") with Juliet on the Dixon roof for her balcony. As the story races toward its transcendent end, the actors and audience will follow the action down the lawn and beside the brook of the Dixon gardens while travelling scenes break out around them. The final traverse will lead everyone under a lit cathedral of trees to the gardens' circular Venus statue site, where Shakespeare buries the famous rage of two families' parents in the deaths of their loving children.

Directed by Seattle Shakespeare Company Artistic Director Stephanie Shine, Romeo and Juliet's 10-person cast features TSC newcomers Wolfe Coleman (Romeo) and Carey Elise (Juliet), both from New York, the return of Washington, DC actor Caley Milliken (Lady Capulet, Tybalt). The cast also includes company members Slade Kyle (Mercutio, Prince, Friar John), Michael Khanlarian (Capulet, Apothecary), Matthew Crewse (Nurse, Montague, Paris), and Darius Wallace (Friar Laurence, Peter). Newcomers include Adam Maldonado (Benvolio) and local musicians John Ross (guitarist) and Jon Epting (percussionist).

Bruce Bui (Othello, Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night's Dream), resident designer at Ballet Memphis, will design costumes, and Eric Haugen (A Midsummer Night's Dream) returns from Orlando, FL, to illuminate the Dixon acreage as Lighting Designer. TSC Education Program Manager Slade Kyle is Fight Choreographer, and Caley Milliken (Dream, Julius Caesar, Themes from a Midsummer Night) returns as Dance Choreographer. Seattle-based Scenic Designer Jason Phillips designs the touring set. John Ross is composing and arranging the live music with drummer Jon Epting on stage. The music is inspired by Impressionist composers Satie, Debussy, and Ravel.

Romeo and Juliet marks another first-time collaboration for TSC. Over the past year, Artistic Director Dan McCleary wrote and produced Themes from a Midsummer Night to perform with IRIS Orchestra and conductor Michael Stern at Germantown Performing Arts Centre last month. The concert was a sold-out hit. Also in February, TSC held its second annual gala with a performance of Love Letters and Love Songs at the U of M Holiday Inn. The event hosted 460 party-goers and netted the company more than $75,000 for organizational support.

Romeo and Juliet is supported by TSC's new title sponsor: FedEx Corporation. With the generous sponsorship of FedEx and Mr. FrEd Smith, the public performances of Romeo and Juliet were made possible at The Dixon Gallery & Gardens.

TSC Season Sponsors: Barbara B. Apperson Angel Fund, Nancy and Dan Copp, City of Germantown, Audrey Taylor.

Additional TSC funding is provided by: Dunbar Abston Fund for Sustainable Excellence, Peter and Mary Lee Formanek, John Paul Jones, Milton T. Schaeffer, Ann and Wellford Tabor, Owen and Margaret Tabor, Sr.

"Both TSC and the Dixon have been bringing all of our resources to bear through the past year to make this unique experience possible to as wide a Mid-South audience as possible," said TSC Founder and Producing Artistic Director Dan McCleary. "This is such a highly unusual dual-production (touring and environmental) that I felt only this particular national group of artists could create it, led by Stephanie Shine who constantly illuminates and makes resonant this play's text for me.

"This production is inspired by the unusual natural beauty and the tremendous collaborative efforts of the Dixon Gardens, Executive Director Kevin Sharp, and his can-do staff. The project has been instrumental in increasing our season sponsors who feel classical education is imperative to our schools and that classical performance is vital to our adult culture. In particular, the collaboration was the touchstone that brought TSC together with FedEx. For their generous title sponsorship, the Board of Directors and I are so grateful, and we look forward to years of cultural, educational partnering."

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet first appeared on stage in 1595. He borrowed the story from a poem published in 1562, the year he was born, titled The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, written first in Italian by Bandell, then in English by Arthur Brooke. Shakespeare followed the poem's plot and used some of the same words for his dialogue.

As in all of the plays from which he borrows, his Romeo and Juliet is infused with deep humanity, new and unique characters, compacts the action into a few short days, and evolves the two young lovers into fully realized young people who build between them a love that is inclusive of their minds, spirits, and bodies. Until Shakespeare crafted his title characters for the stage, no other playwright had yet expressed so understandably the exhilaration, maturity, purity, and completeness of shared, young love.

Shakespeare also tells the entire story before his play begins - in his Prologue, written in 14-line sonnet form. What is popularly considered the greatest love story ever told is born in a world of rage. The ancient feud between the Capulet and Montague households infuses fair Verona with prejudice and hatred. No one ever says what started the violent feud, which prevents audiences from taking sides. Civilians are killing one another.

The only children of the houses of Montague and Capulet are teenagers Romeo and Juliet, and they are "star-cross'd." Fate is working against them, and these children will take their own lives because their love for another cannot be requited in the world of violence their parents and ancestors have wrought. The suicides of Juliet and Romeo become the terrible sacrifice that is needed to end the rage. The children are unsavable, making the play a tragedy. But their deaths, and those of their young peers in the story, are remarkable for their timeless instruction to all ages.

"Romeo and Juliet, as an audience experience, evolves perfectly," says director Stephanie Shine from Seattle. "It speaks to multiple generations at once with age-specific clarity. It is a play that families should see together, because it is a play about families and how the inner workings of family may be expressed in our larger society. The terrible violence and the loss of invaluable young lives in the story are an all too common occurrence for our urban communities. But what the play offers in response is a great lesson in the power of individual choice, the freedom that truth brings, and, best of all, the hope for change. Romeo and Juliet shows us all what love and forgiveness can do to change a community for the better."

You may purchase tickets today by logging onto www.tnshakespeare.org or by calling the TSC Box Office at (901) 759-0604, Monday - Friday from 9:00 am - 5:00 pm.

 

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