Written by: Natajia Sconiers
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​What sonnets did you work on and in what capacity? 
Charlotte: I was a writer for Sonnets 65, 96 and 150
Tay: I performed in sonnet 82, adapted by Erlina Ortiz

Had you had any experience adapting classical work before?
Charlotte: I have had experience taking classical work and creating a  streamlined script for production. The most intense piece I ever did was taking Fair Maid of the West, parts 1 and 2 and making them into one script for the PAC production in 2015. That took me AGES. Basically, almost every script that PAC produces has gone through some sort of process. Classical work is like bread - gotta knead the dough to make good bread. That might be a silly metaphor but that's what I got.
Tay: Never! This was my 1st time working on a piece that was directly adapted from Shakespeare’s works, and I was really excited to discover and also curious to learn more about the process and Tai was super gracious and more than willing to sit down and discuss with me all the work that went into this project and the entire process

What is your experience with Revolution Shakespeare as a company?
Charlotte: I have been a part of 2 of the all-women readings and have directed one. I love what Tai is doing and can't wait to see what she does next.
Tay: I’d seen a couple productions and worked with Tai Verley during my time at Del Shakes but this is my first (and hopefully not the last) project with Revolution Shakespeare.

What resonated with you the most in your sonnets?
Charlotte: Maybe it's just my cynicism speaking but I definitely heard some snarky voices in my head when I was working on these pieces. The sonnets are pretty raw in terms of the emotion that threads throughout them. The raw love and passion and self-flagellation at times can be overwhelming, appealing and repulsing all at once for me. Definitely speaks to the passion of love in perhaps a younger Shakespeare. Yeah, I feel like an old lady when I read some of them - they are just so private in public, you know?
Tay: What was so endearing to me about the sonnet I performed in is that the writer is expressing or acknowledging that this person they admire makes an effort to get attention/validation from others online and they are good at it. They are acknowledging “hey, you are gorgeous and other people/strangers you don’t even know think so too… but I see you without all the makeup and the show of social media, and I think you are beautiful in public and private”. It’s not shaming or belittling the person for “performing” for others ( because who are we kidding? I think we all do that/seek validation to some degree) but it is accepting all parts of the person. Saying i see all parts of you and i think they are all equally beautiful.

What is similar in the sonnets (or) how would one identify the sonnet as coming from you? What about your sonnets are essentially "you"?
Charlotte: Sonnet 150 spoke to me the most. As an immigrant, the thought of loving something so flawed and yet wanting to put all you have into it made me examine my own relationship with the United States. People often ask me, "Why do you live here?" "Why don't you go back to Canada - especially now?" And I really struggle with the answer because most of my adult life has been spent in the US and I have a deep love/hate relationship with it. And the US I moved to in the late 90's isn't the same place as it is now. So, Sonnet 150 somehow speaks to that - I'm not sure I achieved that but that's what I was going for…
Tay: I've always been super into visuals and cinematography, mood achieved through colors and lighting and effects. I’ve always been super aware of aesthetics in television and film and how are they affecting/manipulating my emotions and experience as an audience member overtly or subtly? I tried to achieve that in the way I filmed my sonnet.

What was the most fun about working on this project? What was the most challenging?
Charlotte: Fun was trusting myself and actually putting pen on paper. Challenging was actually trusting myself and putting pen on paper.
Tay: The most fun was actually filming the things outside and seeing how things came together when editing. The most challenging was trying to figure out how i would physically achieve the things i wanted to do in my head...and the sound quality! I hope everything I did matched what the playwright wanted or they were at least interested/intrigued by my take on their words.

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Written By: Jamie Hafner

On the sidewalks of Fishtown, Harriet’s Bookshop owner Jeannine Cook can be found bringing the store’s shelves of books and other goods outside on the weekends.

The Coronavirus outbreak has not stopped Cook’s mission; To celebrate female writers, activists, and artists while creating a space for dialogue and discussion. 

“Our mission is slightly different now” Cook noted when discussing the adjustments her bookshop made to continue to serve customers, adding that, “We [Harriet’s Bookshop] took some lemons and made lemonade”.

Harriet’s Bookshop continues to serve the community every Thursday through Saturday, creating socially distant spaces for conversation and book-sharing in a Coronavirus-safe manner. The bookshop’s collection of books changes monthly, thanks to Cook’s monthly collaborations with different female artists who curate the shop’s book selection.

“This is the right thing for me, celebrating women,” Cook said, detailing that “For the most part, [I had] never been to a bookstore that celebrated women and black people. There was a void”.

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Harriet's Bookshop is located on:
​ 258 E Girard Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19125
www.harriettsbookshop.com/

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Fellow Philadelphia bookstore owner, Lynn Washington, also noticed a void when serving as Design Studio Supervisor at the Free Library of Philadelphia in 2001.

“My job put me in the position to be acutely aware of the abysmal numbers of African-American children who were not able to read by third grade,” Washington remembers.

“My daughter learned to read by kindergarten, and I knew that that happened because I and her father talked, read and sang to her since she was a baby”.

Once Washington discovered that she could create her own bookselling business, she knew that she could make a difference in the lives of Philadelphia African-American children. 

“My main objective was to get quality books and other educational items, such as puzzles, quiz cards, into the hands and homes of low-income parents, for themselves and their children”.

Now, Washington houses Philadelphia’s largest selection of Afrocentric Children’s Books at her bookshop, Books & Stuff.

Even though the pandemic has temporarily shut Books & Stuff’s doors, interested customers can still purchase books and merchandise online, including by purchasing new SURPRISE! packages. 

“My daughter prompted the idea of "surprise" packages. Soon after I had to close, because of COVID-19, I began thinking about closing the shop for good. She encouraged me to refocus my efforts towards my website shop. My daughter suggested selling packages of books/gifts for children to have something to do, as summer was approaching” Washington stated.

Shoppers can select a price point and age range, allowing Books & Stuff to tailor the perfect package for each customer.

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Written by: Jamie Hafner

The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window - Lorraine Hansberry (1964)

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Along with creating the image for The Sea Voyage also created portraits for each character based on each actor cast in the role in the show. These eleven portraits were also created in a similar style as the graphic created for the show.  Andrew Criss’s idea to incorporate a “meet the cast” component to his vision for the artistic media for The Sea Voyage was extremely unique, and a refreshing take on allowing the cast faces to be a part of the storytelling as well.

“When you do a portrait you really study the person... get to know them and you're also telling the story of their character, so it's a great way to begin character research as well, as well as study the play and think how can I tell the story of this play... the graphics are the first introduction to the play, so that poster that advertisement that postcard, is the very first thing that the audience might see, especially if they don’t know the play, it's one of the first impressions of the play that they have, so there's an important responsibility" - Andrew Criss

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We've worked with a number of tremendously talented photographers over the years -- look no further than David Comdico's stunning images of the men aboard the Tall Ship Gazela in The Sea Plays or his etherial black-and-white portrait of Chris Coucill's Timon of Athens. We've jumped up and down excitedly when collaborating with Kate Raines (yielding images such as our eerie, falling bride of Blood Wedding), and there was simply nothing else to do when viewing Kyle Cassidy's Vanity Fair-style portrait of our actors in Mary Stuart but gasp, and have it framed immediately. 

So photographer Ashley LaBonde had some tall shoes to fill when tackling the promotional shots for "He Who Gets Slapped" -- during which we asked her to arrive at our space, capture images of the actors on a tight schedule after being thrown into makeshift costumes, and document the process. 

Her work continues to astonish and astound us, and some of our favorite images from that shoot are the behind-the-scenes candids of makeup artist Jessica DalCanton hard at work, or the glimmering moment when actor Bob Weick, killing time before his costume fitting, began practicing a hat trick. The decision to photoshop her images into the poster design was directly inspired by the painterly quality that she brings to the table, yielding our oil-painting poster with our actors' faces, perfectly captured by Ashley. Enjoy this gallery of images, and don't miss HE WHO GETS SLAPPED. 

According to theater lore, groundbreaking director Amy Saltz has a mantra: 

“If you don’t think every play is about sex, you shouldn’t be making theater.”  

Is that true?  I mean...  Streetcar is all about sex. And Macbeth kind of is too. But is  Endgame about sex? Is Antigone or All My Sons? Maybe not on the surface, but still this statement rings true to me.  Why is that?

Maybe becaue sex isn’t really about sex. I mean, it is, but the actual getting-it-on part is just a tiny piece of what we mean when we talk about “sex." It’s mostly about the forbidden, about desire, about need and danger. Sex is about posessing and surrendering. And love and destiny and honor. And these are all very big ideas indeed.

The Rover is most definitely about sex. From page one, the characters are plotting to have sex with people they like and avoiding having sex with people they don’t.  It’s funny. It’s naughty.  It’s frothy entertainment:  a spectacle of a play with some very clever, strong willed ladies and some very handsome, smart mouthed boys. 

Just below the surface, it is also surprisingly subversive.  Hellena and Florinda both want to take control of their sexual destinies. And for a 17th Century woman, your sexual destiny could very well be your whole destiny. As the hymen went, so went the whole self. 

And the comedy of the play, the wink it gives the audience, is that we all know it will be better and more fun for everyone if the Ladies get their way and outsmart their brothers and fathers. The playwright expects us to be on their side. Well…they are beautiful young noblewomen, so maybe that’s not such a big stretch. Shakespeare did a lot of that too.

But then there is Angelica, the high priced courtesan, making her independent way in the world in the only way a woman could. She decides she wants to change her destiny, buy into the system, get married and settle down. And for a long while, the play takes her side. Double standards and male treachery are pilloried throughout. The triumphant ending, we expect, will bring Angelica her 
victory too.

Except it doesn’t.

She doesn’t get her man. She's told very clearly to get back to work instead. It’s a deliciously dark note in the frothy “everyone is getting married” end of this madcap comedy. Aphra Behn knew very well what it took for a woman to survive on her own in a world where she had no inalienable rights. In her own sly way, she turns her viewers' gaze directly towards that deep injustice.

We sometimes think of feminism and feminist thought as ideas that sprang fully formed from the brow of Mary Wollenstonecraft, but the truth is much murkier.  Throughout history and around the globe, exceptional women have seen through the structures of the society around them and become well aware of their place in that society. Aphra Behn used that insight to make us laugh.... but while we were laughing, she spoke right to “the double standard, which limited her female peers’ sexual desires to the realm of convent, brothel, or home.”  (Ellen T Goodson)

I’m delighted that PAC is giving me a chance to dive into this complicated play. While it’s true that none of my American contemporaries are worried about being forced into convents by their brothers,  I still see a whole lot of angry men fighting over who gets to make decisions about our vaginas. 

Maybe The Rover's laughs hit closer to home than we thought.


Tickets to the Venture Reading Series are always free!

The Rover | Monday, November 9th | 7 pm | Broad Street Ministry 
Directed by Kittson O'Neill

For a brief time at the PAC, we tossed around catchy, quippy phrases as a way to market ourselves. Mostly as a joke -- but one of those jokes where we're only half-serious! -- we toyed with the idea of making t-shirts with the slogan "Philadelphia Artists' Collective: Dead playwrights, living classics." There was something kitschy and funny to us about pointing out a certain reality: that on some level, the work we are doing -- breathing new life into very old plays -- relies upon the fact that the playwrights are mostly a bunch of old, dead dudes. 

Meet Ian August. Playwright, actor, artist, all-around good guy -- and most definitely alive and well. We are thrilled to be working on his newest play, The Moor's Son, as a part of our Venture Reading Series in 2015. A new play that fits into the mission statement of the PAC? Yup. 

We sat down with Ian to chat Shakespeare, history, and what it means to be the guy who says, "I think I'd like to write a sequel to Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus." 

Hi, Ian! First of all, I just want to say that we're thrilled to have you as our first (living!) playwright collaborator with the PAC! Can you talk a bit about the inspiration behind "Moor's Son"? What drew you to this particular material? 

I'm just as thrilled as you are!  I've been a huge fan of PAC for years now--my husband and I have seen nearly every PAC show since The Dutchess of Malfi, and I can't imagine working with another company on The Moor's Son! 

The Moor's Son is written as a sequel to Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus--arguably the Bard's bloodiest play.  I fell in love with Titus after seeing Julie Taymor's brilliant film adaptation, which starred Anthony Hopkins as the titular Roman general and Jessica Lange as the evil queen, Tamora.  Even though it was Shakespeare's first play, you can see echoes of MacBeth, of Hamlet, of Othello--characters with true moral ambiguity and questionable motives and complex psyches--but the world of Titus Andronicusis a world that is unapologetically violent.  For nearly all of the characters in TA, the solution to every problem is revenge, which perpetuates the violence in all of it's gory glory.  But there is a moment where one of the characters breaks that cycle, and that's the moment that got my wheels turning.

It happens towards the end of the play: Lucius, Titus' son, is raising an army to bring down Tamora and the Emperor, when he is approached by Tamora's servant and lover, the moor Aaron.  Aaron, who is often described as one of the most evil characters in the canon, has fathered an illegitimate child with Tamora, and fled Rome to hide his newborn son.  He offers to reveal to Lucius all of the terrible things he's done to the Andronicus family if Lucius will protect the baby.  Lucius agrees, and it is this act of kindness by Lucius that breaks the cycle of violence.  By the end of the play, when (spoiler alert!) everyone else has died gruesome deaths, Lucius becomes the new Emperor of Rome.  

The Moor's Son takes place twenty years later: Lucius is now the Emperor, and in failing health, and that baby--multi-racial, son of the most reviled villain of Rome--is now a young man, raised in the court of Rome, and named after his father.  I wanted to explore the experience of that man, and at the same time, revisit the ramifications of the violence of Shakespeare's play, and work out, for myself, what it was all about.  The Moor's Son is a story about legacy and birthright; and also about politics and discrimination and forgiveness and self-acceptance.  

How long have you been developing this work? 

I had seen the Public Theater's production of Titus Andronicus in 2011, a stirring, bare-bones production (very similar to the work PAC does!) and spent the car ride home chatting about it with my husband (set designer Matthew Campbell, of PAC's recent production of Blood Wedding).  We kept coming back to the end of the play: whatever happened to that baby?  Did Lucius raise the child alongside his son?  And what must it have been like to be a mixed-race child growing up in the court of Rome? Especially with the legacy that Shakespeare's Aaron left behind!  

I called Damon the minute we got home, and I pitched him the basics of The Moor's Son.  I told him I had an idea for a sequel to Titus Andronicus, and would he, would PAC, be interested in taking a look at it?  In order to sweeten the deal, I told him that I would write the play completely in iambic pentameter--even though Shakespeare didn't write TA in iambic pentameter--I would do it, and it would be good, and would he take a look at it when I finished a draft?  Fortunately, he said yes; unfortunately, I now had to write a sequel to a Shakespeare play in iambic pentameter!

I spent most of 2012 working out the basics--the plot, the characters, what was going on in this world, and how The Moor's Soncould be a story independent of it's inspiration.  I began writing at the end of 2012, and finished a draft by the following April.  Luckily, a friend who is an acting professor at Rider University offered up his students and his talent to help me develop the play further--and I was able to work on a staged reading with some exceptionally talented Rider students in May of 2013.  After that, I handed it over to Damon and to PAC.   

Have you collaborated with Damon before? Talk to us about the relationship between your work, this play's source material, and the PAC ... what is it like to create a new play based upon classical themes? 

I had the pleasure of meeting Damon through the Passage Theatre Company in Trenton, NJ.  He and his wife Charlotte had been acting with the company for some time, and I was searching for a director for a reading of my play, Donna Orbits the Moon, at the New Jersey Repertory Company.  Damon accepted, and that began one of my favorite collaborative relationships.  

What I love about Damon is his insightful ability to analyze text--whether it's a contemporary or period play, whether comedy or drama or something in between.  More than that: his ability to appreciate text.  Damon understands that every word I write is included for a purpose, and he is able to find that purpose through his direction.  

And what better home to do it in than PAC?  Every show I've seen with PAC has a company of artists just as eager and excited to dive into language--to tear it apart and find out what's inside of every line!  I mean, I wept at Changes of Heart--I was crushed by The Rape of Lucrece!  Did you see Mary Stuart?  I'm still shaking!  

Writing The Moor's Son was intimidating--it still is!  But I learned early on that I couldn't pretend to be writing Shakespeare--this play had to be it's own animal.  And although the themes of my play are inspired by many found in the Bard's plays, I think they are just as prevalent in contemporary works: The desire to honor the legacy of one's parents?  Sure, that's Hamlet, but it's also Proof.  The longing to fit into a world in which one feels he (or she) doesn't belong?  It's Othello and Henry IV Part One and Six Degrees of Separation and Venus and Les Miserables.  The motifs of The Moor's Son are adapted from classic drama, yes, but the themes are still relevant today.


Is there anything that you're hoping the audience will take away after the reading? 

A close friend of mine once told me that a great play can do three things:  It can entertain us, it can make us feel something, and it can make us think.  A good play, he said, will do two of those things--but a great play will do all three.  I hope that our audience will be able to look at this play and find moments to have all three of those experiences.  Even though the play is not in it's final stages (I learn so much in a reading about where my next revision should go), if the audience is able to share those moments with each other, with the actors, with Damon and I, then that's a successful reading in my book.

Anything else you'd like to add (or plug, even!) 

I can't express how grateful I am to Damon and Dan and everyone at PAC for embracing this play.  I've never written anything else like it, and I'm so eager to visit the world of the play with this talented group of performers!  But if anyone is interested in seeing more of my work--work that is far less Shakespearian, I promise--the Passage Theatre Company will be producing my play The Goldilocks Zone in May of this year.  And it will be directed by (you probably guessed it!)  Damon Bonetti!  If anyone is curious, go to www.passagetheatre.org to find out more information.  We would love to see you there!