Taming: A Folk Tale at Witches 3 Productions

Set deep in the Virginia pines of Appalachia in 1908, Taming: A Folk Tale keeps Shakespeare's original text but moves The Taming of the Shrew into a Southern Gothic world, with a bloody twist. Kate and Petruchio's whirlwind romance becomes a story of vampirism, superstition, and a community ready to turn on anything it doesn't understand.

Traditional readings treat the play as a story about patriarchal power. This production uses the supernatural to explore otherness, queerness, power imbalance, and what truly makes someone a monster. Vampirism stands in for the outsider, and for a seductive, dangerous kind of power. The production doesn't look away from the abusive elements of Kate and Petruchio's relationship. Instead, it asks how two people condemned by everyone around them might be "madly mated" in the most beautiful way. As Petruchio puts it, "where two raging fires meet together, they do consume the thing that feeds their fury."

"We live in a scary world right now, but the sad thing is, it’s not a story we haven’t heard before. Much like in our ‘folktale’, we have seen people use propaganda to paint a group of people as monsters or villains, and its always easy to say ‘oh, that could never be us’. Yet, we see it repeated in our history over and over again. This story has been so fulfilling to explore because we are unraveling how a community can be influenced, while also exploring who the real monster is when a narrative is painted in one group’s favor at the cost of another’s ," said Cheyenne Haynes, director of Taming: A Folk Tale.

At its core, the play examines how prejudice, fear of the unknown, and mob mentality keep people from recognizing themselves in one another. In a culture shaped by fear of the "other," compassion can turn up in the most unlikely places, and deception can hide in plain sight when everyone is blinded by their own righteous judgment.

Rather than a story of female submission and male domination, Taming: A Folk Tale celebrates the untamed, feral nature in all of us. Starring Dallas-based actors Katie Wetch as Katarina and Meagan Harris as Petruchio, the production features an original score composed by Justin Locklear and performed live by Eric Talamantes, Sarah Rogerson, and Rowan Gilvie. The creative team includes Cheyenne Haynes and Jae Payne (direction), Isa Flores (special effects, gore, and makeup), Jenny Barrett (lighting design), Katelyn Jackson (costume design), Brandon Wetch (fight direction), Hannah Alyea (choreography), and Claire Fountain (intimacy coordination).

Where does belonging come from when acceptance is out of reach? Who could ever love a monster? And what happens when everything you are will never be enough?

If you dare to whistle in the woods, be careful. You just might get an answer back.