Every theater artist has that one passion project they’d really like to see produced. Reject Theatre Project is a freshly formed eight-person artist collective dedicated to creating and producing each member’s dream project before disbanding. The company launches this week with an inventive take on Shakespeare’s CORIOLANUS courtesy of Lesley Berkowitz, a local physical theater artist with a passion for demystifying classical texts for the contemporary audience.
Reject Theatre Project is the brainchild of recent University of the Arts’ graduates Elaina Di Monaco and Haygen Brice Walker. They put out a call to the Philadelphia theater”community requesting a proposal for a dream project that other companies would scoff at. They accepted six other “Rejects” and are committed to producing eight works, from devised work to Shakespeare, over the course of three years.
For CORIOLANUS [SHAKESPEARE ROULETTE], Lesley and her creative team have created ten character tracks for the play, cast nine brave actors (Joseph Ahmed,,Rebecca Buckley,Richard Chan, Emily Fernandez, Lisa Fischel, Amanda Jill Robinson Sarah Schol, Megan Slater, Hannah Van Sciver) and will invite one guest actor to join the cast each night (see below for dates). The audience will enter the space (ideally with a drink from the theater’s bar, Quigs) and witnesses the actors choose their fate. Literally. The actors have no idea which roles they are playing until curtain.
Naturally, this reading of one of Shakespeare’s lesser-known tragedies comes with a drinking game. [Skinner Studio, Plays & Players, 1714 Delancey Place, 3rd Floor] April 29-May 2, 2015; RejectTheatreProject.org.
GUEST ACTORS:
Isa St. Clair (Wednesday, April 29)
Lizzie Spellman (Thursday, April 30)
Angela Smith (Friday, May 1)
Griffin Stanton-Ameisen (Saturday, May 2)