Blast from the past...

From the deepest recesses of my purse: My Mortal Terror ticket stub.

Bringing 'Mortal Terror' to the Stage

I love plays that view historical events and persons through a contemporary prism. I love being in rehearsal with a bunch of really smart, funny, opinionated theater artists. And I love William Shakespeare, who despite being married, possibly bisexual, definitely not Jewish, and almost 400 years dead, is one of the most important men in my life. Like Bob Brustein and Stafford Clark-Price – see blog entries below – I am a Shakespeare nerd. So odds were good that I was going to have a fine time directing Mortal Terror. 

Inside 'Mortal Terror'

Robert Brustein

Mortal Terror is the second play in a Shakespeare trilogy I have been writing, and it concerns the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, an event that bears an uncanny resemblance to the World Trade Center Plot of 2001. (The Jacobean version was meant to blow the twin towers of Parliament into the Thames.) I imagine Shakespeare, during this time, being asked by James I of England, to write a play justifying his right to the throne. Against his conscious will, he writes Macbeth, with its references to witches (James wrote a book about them) and the Gunpowder Plot (in the Porters speech).

I also imagine that Shakespeare and James's Danish Queen Anne came very close to an affair, and that he helped his drinking companions, Ben Jonson and John Marston, out of a lot of trouble with the King when they satirized the Scots.

The play also concerns the conflicts within an artist forced by circumstances to write against his will, and the way that even something intended as propaganda can become a work of art, if the artist is gifted enough. And, most of all, Mortal Terror is about Shakespeare's growing awareness of mankind's inhumanity to man.

- Robert Brustein, Playwright

What Terrifies You?

With Mortal Terror going up on Thursday, September 15, I wanted to know from the people involved in the production: What terrifies YOU? (And those of you reading, please comment right here on the blog and let us know about your rational -- and irrational -- fears!)

Kate Snodgrass (producer/artistic director):

1. My refrigerator breaking down again. (It was a nightmare.) When it starts making humming noises, I begin to worry.

2. Daddy Long Legs. They breed at the cabin where I go in Vermont every summer. Sometimes I don't see any, but if it's August (I don't know why),they show up. Lots of them. LOTS OF THEM. They're harmless, but...They're hard to see except on the white bedspread when I'm sleeping and it's the middle of the night and they're crawling

up toward my head and jumping from the floor and the curtains (and they're fast), and then 40 of them sit on my face. (It's a nightmare.)

3. I'll have to move back to Kansas. Enough said.

Robert Brustein (playwright):

1., 2., and 3. The current Republican leadership terrifies me.

Georgia Lyman (actor):

1. Not living up to my own expectations

2. Prolonged illness.

3. Slugs. Not kidding. It's an irrational fear.

Will I Am

Stafford Clark-Price, right, in Robert Brustein's The English Channel

Let’s get this out of the way immediately: I am a bit of a Shakespeare nerd. I blame my mother for the love of language and Mrs. Fitch, my 8th grade English teacher, for casting me as Macbeth in our classroom reading of the play. When I was given the opportunity to play Shakespeare in The English Channel in New York, part one in Mr. Brustein’s trilogy, I was thrilled at the opportunity to try and breathe life into such an enigmatic historical figure at the beginning of his career.

In Mortal Terror, we meet Will at a very different time in his life. He is now a successful playwright, having penned Hamlet, Lear, As You Like It and numerous other smash hits. Unlike many artistic geniuses, Shakespeare was celebrated during his lifetime and it is during this period that the curtain rises on our play. Queen Elizabeth has just died and James has just taken the throne, bringing with him a new religion and retinue.

Alumni news, in brief:

Snovi, a short film with a screenplay co-written by Jonathon Myers, won the ‘Best Experimental’ category at the 15^th Annual Rhode Island Film Festival…

Karmo Sanders' musical Gold Rush Girls will hit the stage at Cyrano’s Theatre Company in Anchorage, Alaska next summer…

Steven Barkhimer will direct The Merry Wives of Windsor at Actors’ Shakespeare Project this season…

The award-winning musical Ferdinand the Bull, with a book by Karen Zacarías, runs at The RoseTheater (home to the Omaha Theater Company) in September…

John Kuntz will appear in Robert Brustein’s Mortal Terror next month, right here at BPT…

30th Anniversary Season Announced!

Pictured: Ramona Lisa Alexander in Derek Walcott’s Ti-Jean & His Brothers

Photo by A.R. Sinclair Photography

Boston Playwrights’ Theatre continues its 30^th Anniversary season by presenting, in collaboration with Suffolk University, Robert Brustein’s Mortal Terror at the newly re-opened Modern Theatre at Suffolk University. National Medal of Arts winner Robert Brustein brings the spirit of William Shakespeare back to the stage in his imaginative story of political upheaval set during the ignition of the Gunpowder Plot. Featuring Stafford Clark-Price as William Shakespeare, together with Ken Cheeseman, Michael Hammond, Jeremiah Kissel, John Kuntz, Georgia Lyman, Christopher James Webb and directed by Daniela Varon.

Click here to purchase tickets.

The second and third new works celebrated in Boston Playwrights’ Theatre’s 30^th Anniversary season feature two recent graduates of Boston Playwrights’ Theatre’s MFA Playwriting Program.

In a suspenseful showdown between the old and new guard, The Farm by Walt McGough examines a profession where no one can be trusted. Directed by Elliot Norton Award-winner David R. Gammons and featuring Nael Nacer and Lindsey McWorter, “the farm” is the last place you want to get caught off guard.