The Guerrilla Shakespeare Project Presents KING JOHN 5/6-23

The Guerrilla Shakespeare Project brings William Shakespeare's tragic history KING JOHN to the Medicine Show Theatre on May 6 to 23, 2010.

Hot on the heels of its sold-out critical smash, The Two Noble Kinsmen, Guerrilla Shakespeare Project is making an exciting leap from tragicomedy to tragic history. Serving up another rarity to New York audiences who are clearly hungry for uncommon treats done well, Shakespeare's King John brings a shockingly familiar world of self-annihilating greed from 13th-century England to America today.

Guerrilla Takes on John

The company of nine actors tackles this royal family drama in which a dominating uncle is pitted against his innocent nephew, both claiming the right to the throne. When Uncle John will not bend to young Arthur's demand for his birthright, an onslaught of wars and betrayals entangle all The Players in this bloody fight to capture the crown.

GSP blends traditions of classical acting with updated concepts of style, behavior, dress, music and mood. The GSP creative team of designers, composers and choreographers applies its muscular style to a smartly pared-down text that vaults us through the short reign of English John in the early 1200s. Set in a devastated land, John becomes a despicable, absurd tyrant ruling in brutal times. The design reflects that devastation and ruin by setting the action in what looks and feels like a royal junkyard, where all the tattered remnants of Richard the Lion Heart's victorious crusades are left behind, but none of its majesty. This production will reveal a political culture blindly self-destructing then taking the first steps to true change, a very 21st-century dilemma-all told in glorious verse by magnetic characters.

The Team

The cast features GSP company members Jordan Kaplan*, Tom Schwans*, Jacques Roy*, and Ginger Eckert* as well as GSP vets Patricia Lynn*, Craig Wesley Divino* and GSP newcomers Lena Hart*, Kern McFadden*, and Jude Sandy.
* appearing courtesy of Actors' Equity

Directed by Jordan Reeves; Lighting by Melissa Mizell; Sound & Music by Charles Shell; Set by Jacques Roy, Jordan Reeves & Tristan Jeffers; Costumes by Tiffany Baker; Fight Choreography by Jordan Reeves; Dramaturgy by Haas Regen; Stage Managed by DarrylLee VanOudenhove.
- Creative Team details below

Where & When & How

Medicine Show Theatre
549 West 52nd Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues
Nearest subway: C/E to 50th or N/R to 49th

May 6 to 23
Thursdays at 7:30 p.m.
Fridays & Saturdays at 8 p.m.
Sundays at 3 p.m.

For tickets: Reserve at www.SmartTix.com or 212-868-4444, or cash at door
All tickets: $18

A Blurb

In the shadow of victorious crusades and overbearing mothers, the foolish tyrant King John grasps too tightly for greatness as he fights family and morality to keep his crown. The Guerrilla Shakespeare Project brings its lean and hungry style to Shakespeare's earliest history play.

Why King John Now?

With The Two Noble Kinsmen, the Guerrilla Shakespeare Project discovered how thrilled audiences are to experience, for the first time, Shakespeare's rarely performed works. In its ongoing exploration of the 36 plays in the canon, GSP renders this treasured tragic history play as a direct response to the company's growing audience and an expansion of its vision and creativity, which now jumps to the flip side of comedy. King John rounds out a truly unique season and presents a refreshing, nearby, off-off- alternative to the Broadway Tony season.

In this complicated and controversial country, we have a very small sense of what could be a very broad unity. We the people seem plagued by concerns of wealth and self-interest and are, therefore, unable or unwilling to come together for the good of the whole. This is the story of King John. Strip away the English historical references, and we face the same fierce aggression and confused priorities today. In the end, Shakespeare reveals that the first steps to "kiss the lips of unacquainted change" are to admit that our faults and fears are our own and to take full responsibility for our power. Only then can we hope to change.

King John in Popular Culture

In Shakespeare's portrait, King John is neither a meddlesome dolt as in The Lion in Winter nor a punishing miser as in Robin Hood, but that is how most audiences would recognize him. As the favorite son of the great King Henry II and younger brother to King Richard the Lion Heart, John took the crown in the shadow of two infamous royals. Here John will become either an opportunist of near genius or a rash tyrant who grasps too tightly for greatness and loses it all.

There Will Be Blood: The Characters

Audiences can look forward to seeing King John's rarely yet famously drawn characters, prized for generations by classical actors. The railing and ambitious Constance seeks justice for her son, Arthur, with power and pathos that predicts Lear's rages. Richard the Lion Heart's son, the clever and fearless Bastard Faulconbridge, threatens to become the hero of the play. The gluttonous and usurping John is emboldened by his heritage but unable to outgrow his rash political impulses.

Two powerful innocents hold the heart of the story-the kind, young Arthur, who shows his strength when threatened with torture, and Blanche, who is pawned in marriage to the bold, conniving Lewis (the Dauphin of France), then torn by her divided loyalties. King Philip of France takes up Arthur's fight then proves to be a traitorous calf in a lion's hide. Salisbury and Pembroke voice the doubting, fearful will of the English people. With Cardinal Pandulph enters the ominous rule outside of England and France, bringing Papal pressure and ultimate control. The Commoner Hubert, who John sends to murder Arthur, and the Bastard may be the only men who respond honestly to the intensely political manipulations, and they are left to protect what remains of England's honor.

Buckets of English and French blood are spilled during this family's land grab, so audiences can expect to see characters bathed in it. The words: "It is a damned and a bloody work, The graceless action of a heavy hand" and "Thy rage shall burn thee up, and thou shalt turn To ashes, ere our blood shall quench that fire" will be dripping in it.

Greed Is Good: The History

In one of his many prescient turns, Shakespeare predicts the modern flavor of greed. Wall Street traffics in commodities, and King John does too. In this world, commodity is more than "a thousand businesses," it is the fatal combination of convenience, self-interest and profit. In one of the play's most famous speeches, the Bastard convicts warring England and France with his biting irony: "Mad world! Mad kings!...Well, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail And say there is no sin but to be rich...Since kings break faith upon commodity, Gain be my lord - for I will worship thee!" Those who worship profit face fiery ends, and those who rise above commodity hold the allegiance of the audience and the fate of the nation. Shakespeare was kind of a commie that way.

King John is the only one of Shakespeare's histories that stands alone, outside the integrated cycle of the Henriad pageant from the Black Prince to the Tudors. With 400 years between this writing (estimated at 1593 or 1594) and John's reign (1199-1216), he molded his material with greater freedom than most of his histories. In the Henriad, Falstaff was a creation but a subplot; in King John, the largely unhistorical figure of the Bastard is at the center of the political action. Though he can never have a legitimate claim to the crown, Shakespeare leads the action towards handing England to Richard the Lion Heart's truest heir. Here, Shakespeare flirts with the fictional to get beyond precious politics and broaden his examination of human behavior under extreme stress.

No Easy Way Out: The Story

In the wake of Richard the Lion Heart's death, John has seized the English crown. John's sister-in-law Constance and her son Arthur align with King Philip of France to demand Arthur's place as Plantagenet and true king. They go to war. Following the war is chaos-a stalemate, a marriage scheme, a papal ex-communication, a kidnapping, madness, torture, betrayal, more war, a deadly accident, and a poisonous murder. What will become of this kingdom? Come to the Guerrilla Shakespeare Project's King John to find out.

CREATIVE TEAM in detail

CAST

King John - Jordan Kaplan*
The Bastard Faulconbridge - Tom Schwans*
King Philip/Salisbury - Jacques Roy*
Constance - Ginger Eckert*
Arthur - Patricia Lynn*
Blanche - Lena Hart*
Lewis the Dauphin - Craig Wesley Divino*
Hubert/Robert Faulconbridge - Kern McFadden*
Cardinal Pandulph/Pembroke - Jude Sandy
*appearing courtesy of Actors' Equity

PRODUCTION

Director - Jordan Reeves is also currently directing and co-creating New Make Do's dance-saga-musical Walker in Babylon. A New York-based actor, director and fight choreographer, he directs nationally, most recently Counting Squares Theatre's critically acclaimed The Importance of Being Earnest, and the world premiere of Stephen Belber's Management. Artistic Director & founding member of GSP, favorite directing projects here include Caesar, Two Gents, & This Is Our Youth. MFA in Acting, Brown University/Trinity Rep.

Lighting Designer - Melissa Mizell has most recently designed lights for East Coast Artists, InViolet Rep, Out of Line Productions, the Midtown International Festival, Juilliard, Chautauqua Theatre Company, Spoleto & Yale Rep. MFA, Yale School of Drama. http://mizelldesign.com

Sound Designer & Original Music - Charles Shell - GSP's The Two Noble Kinsmen, The New School New Visions Festival

Scenic Designers - Jordan Reeves & Jacques Roy

Scenic Design Consult - Tristan Jeffers - GSP's The Two Noble Kinsmen; Ars Nova Artist-in-Residence; Babel Theatre Project's You May Go Now & Stomp and Shout (2009 NYIT Award Outstanding Set Design nom.); Trinity Rep's The Dreams of Antigone; Assistant SD to Eugene Lee on Broadway's The Homecoming, Irish Rep's The Master Builder, NYTW's The Beast, Long Wharf's The Price.

Costume Designer - Tiffany Baker - Bushwick Shakespeare Repertory, Totally Awesome Victory, Really Good Doctors

Fight Choreographer - Jordan Reeves

Dramaturge - Haas Regen - GSP's The Two Noble Kinsmen

Stage Manager - DarrylLee VanOudenhove

Technical Director - Jacques Roy - GSP Producing Director

Publicity - Jating Chen, Diana Buirski, Kimiye Corwin & Ginger Eckert

About GSP

The Guerrilla Shakespeare Project thinks of every Shakespeare play as a new play. GSP fosters a vibrant, passionate, visceral connection between actor and audience to make inventive and immediate American theatre from classical works. Struggling always for simplicity and precision, this gutsy young company promises to make the entertainment and beauty of Shakespeare accessible to all. Prizing skillful use of language and athletic storytelling, the ensemble of professional actors, directors and designers aims to blow apart the audience's conceptions of what Shakespeare has been by creating something new.

Founded in 2005, GSP is one of the young companies born out of collaborations at the Brown University/Trinity Rep graduate theatre program, led then by Public Theater Artistic Director Oskar Eustis. GSP received rave reviews for its New York debut, JULIUS CAESAR, with a female Caesar playing on then-current presidential politics. A taut MEASURE FOR MEASURE followed in the spring of 2009; and this January, THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN was altogether raved and sold out its extended run. Our compatriots include Fiasco Theater (critical and popular hit, Cymbeline) and Babel Theatre Project (Sam Marks's Brack's Last Bachelor Party at 59E59 & New York debut of Chloe Moss's Christmas Is Miles Away). Our training and values are rooted in applying refined technical skill to the demands of classical works and inventing new plays that move audiences and the American theatre forward.

The Company
Founded by Diana Buirski, Jordan Reeves, Jacques Roy & Tom Schwans in 2005.

Artistic Director: Jordan Reeves
Producing Directors: Diana Buirski & Jacques Roy
Executive Director: Tom Schwans
Artistic Associates: Kimiye Corwin, Ginger Eckert, Jordan Kaplan
For news & production history: www.GuerrillaShakespeare.com