The R/18 Collective is a group of international scholars committed to dramaturgical knowledge in the service of theatre makers and other researchers. We believe plays written from the 1660s to the 1830s provide urgently-needed insights into the formation of the modern world, including the historical development of our current ideas about race, gender, sexuality, nation, and capital.
|
|
|
DESIGN/PRODUCTION TEAM
Director: Andrew Watring CAST
|
|
Andrew Watring - Director
Andrew (pronouns: Andrew) is a Black, Trans theatre-creator, director, award-winning playwright, producer, performer, and sorcerer from sweet home Huntsville, Alabama. Andrew's career has been dedicated to the creation and continued cultivation of "Shakespeare is a White Supremacist," a theatrical ritual grounded in analyzing and working to reverse Shakespeare’s colonizing effect on the American theatre; most recently staged with Main Street Players (Miami-Dade, FL). Select directing credits include: the book of lucy, RENT, Angels in America, The Henriad, White Noise, Hamletmachine, Passing: A Stage Play, Coriolanus. Andrew was a Resident-Artist for the Yale Dramatic Association, a member of the Directors Lab North; and a graduate of the Theatre Lab Life Stories Institute. Andrew founded and served as the Artistic Director of the Fractal Theatre Collective, an anti-capitalist arts organization that embraced community-led, direct action as an integral element of theatrical design. Andrew holds a BA in Theatre from American University, and an MFA from Brown University / Trinity Repertory Company. Andrew is currently the Director of Community Programs and Associate Producer at People’s Light. |
|
"At its most basic form, comedy can be considered moving from a state of disorder to order. Mistaken identities become uncovered. Love misplaced transforms into love directed. Arrogance, snobbery, and all manner of indignations are exposed and regulated. During the 17th century, theatrical comedies must necessarily end with the restoration of the accepted world order, regardless of the implications throughout.
This tension between liberation and convention fascinates me to no end. With a wink and a nod, restoration comedy playwrights were providing a roadmap for delicious deviation to their audiences. What happens if that deviation is allowed to stand? What happens when “societal transgressions” have made it so that the world can never be restored to the traditions of the past? (__/Sir) Anthony Love or the Rambling (__/Lady) is my attempt at exposing the lives underneath the accepted world order and letting those beautiful humans to tell their own stories and shine." - Andrew |
Charlotte
Cassandra Alexander |
Count Verole
Newton Buchanan |
Count Canaile
Nathan Foley |
Sir Gentle Golding
James Kern |
An Abbe
Anna Faye Lieberman |
Sir Anthony Love
Eli Lynn |
Ilford
Connor McAndrews |
Floriante
Minou Pourshariati |
Valentine
Vanessa (V) Sterling |
Verole
Tai Verley |
|
From the R18 Collective: |
Sir Anthony Love has the hallmark brittle and brilliant pragmatism of its day: after the moral strictures of the Interregnum, the libertine fantasies of the Restoration, and the political upheaval of the Glorious Revolution, Thomas Southerne considers what a tolerably happy ending might mean within the practical restrictions of gender and class. In the words of Kristina Straub, “much of the play’s focus is on finding pleasure within the context of economic and social survival, not always through morally conventional means.” Its characters both pursue safety and security--marriage--and name the limitations of that form to meet their complete needs as human beings. In its denouement, Southerne offers us what Andrew Watring has astutely called a "roadmap of delicious deviation:" a constellation of possibilities beneath the surface of conventional comic marriages that enable the characters to meet themselves and their lovers, spouses, companions, and friends in more authentic and fulfilling ways.
|
|
|
Thomas Southerne was born in Oxmantown, near Dublin, in 1660. He initially went to school for law, but almost immediately pivoted to the theatre, writing his first play (The Loyal Brother) in 1682. He had a brief stint in the military from 1685-1688, but quickly returned to life as a dramatist.
He authored ten plays in his lifetime, several of them (including Sir Anthony Love) achieving considerable success in their day. One of his biggest inspirations was Aphra Behn, hailed as the first Englishwoman to make a living from her writing. In fact, two of Southerne's most popular plays (The Fatal Marriage and Oroonoko) were actually direct adaptations of works by Behn, and much of his other work is influenced extensively by his admiration for Behn's writing. His work was openly anti-Catholic (as was much of the writing at the time), but in Sir Anthony Love, one will also notice a fair amount of antipathy towards religion in general, which is unusual. The play also explores the concept of breeches roles and the female libertine in the character of Lucia/Sir Anthony. Normally the "woman-disguised-as-man" trope of the era presents the woman as off-put by the trappings of masculinity, only utilizing it in her pursuit of heterosexual marriage and traditionally feminine roles. However, Sir Anthony defies these expectations, exploring and ultimately reveling in the freedoms - especially the sexual freedoms - that are afforded to men. |
