Letter of Marque to Bring DOUBLE FALSEHOOD to Brooklyn This May

"People cringe just hearing the word rape," says Letter of Marque (LoM) co-founder and music director Nolan Kennedy. "That's exactly why we want to have this conversation."

Letter of Marque Theater Co., a Brooklyn based non-profit theater, is used to producing socially challenging work. Last year, they toured Brooklyn bars with their original piece, Bully Me Down, which combined the controversial topics of bullying and the Edward Snowden saga.

This May, LoM is being joined by prolific Shakespearean director, Andrew Borthwick-Leslie to mount a workshop production of Lewis Theobald's Double Falsehood, a work that has recently confirmed to have been based on original Shakespearean manuscripts.

Borthwick-Leslie, with over 20 years of experience with Shakespeare & Co., The Shakespeare Forum and his own ensemble, The Humanist Project, is determined to ask the hard questions around gender, family, trust, honor society and the roles men and women have in perpetuating rape culture. "We hope to both rollick and heal, to both entertain and enlighten. Having a body is hard. Desire is confusing. Other people are exciting and infuriating," says Leslie-Borthwick. "Why do we mostly get it very very wrong? How can we start to do a better job?"

The ensembled-minded cast is musically savvy and working excitedly on original music for the show to be performed live by the actors. "We're using a crazy-cool live composition technique called Soundpainting to sculpt musical scores, moods and songs. We've only just begun and the room is already buzzing, ready to explode into something incredible," says Kennedy.

The classical text, written in 1727, follows the form of a standard 5 act romantic comedy, surfeit with cross-dressing, anguished lovers, foibled fathers, heroic royalty and privy (yet silent) citizenry. It is a smart and scathing contrivance that demands dialogue around why, in nearly 300 years, our society continues to deal in violence, blame and victimization. This initial showing is part one of a three phase project designed to start the conversation and incite a change of perspective in young adults and our society as a whole.

DOUBLE FALSEHOOD by Lewis Theobald will run May 14th to 16th at 8 p.m. at the South Oxford Space, 138 S. Oxford St., Brooklyn, NY 11217. Visit www.LomTheater.org for tickets and more information.

LETTER OF MARQUE THEATER CO, is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary crew of actors, musicians, writers and directors that functions as a performance ensemble to produce new, original and re-imagined theater. LOM's mission is to create accessible, affordable and dynamic theater at little or no charge to their audiences.