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There is nothing that conveys a sense of anticipation quite like being in a bar before it opens. The way the early afternoon light filters in through the windows and across the empty bar top to lie caught in the bottles lined up neatly behind, waiting. In a few short hours this place may well be packed, with the now upended stools on their feet and butts parked on them and dozens of little dramas being played out all over the room. But right now it is quiet and dark and there is only Cosmo the cat strolling over to see what a visitor may have brought him. Cosmo rolls around on the bar top in shameless expectation, oblivious to the hushed hum of the traffic seeping in from West 37th Street outside, and the words of Shakespeare coming from beyond the curtain at the far end of the bar. Beyond the curtain is the Belt Theater, where Überproject is rehearsing its debut show. To the uninitiated, what is being run-through sounds a whole lot like Act III, Scene One from "Romeo and Juliet" -- a jousting, affectionate exchange between Tybalt, Mercutio and Romeo. But as director Kit McKay is quick to point out, this is not Act III, Scene One, it is Scene 7. And this is not "Romeo & Juliet", it is "HousePlague", Überproject's fresh and innovative adaptation of the Bard's timeless tale of doomed love. And while Tybalt and Romeo have been retained fairly intact, Mercutio has become a morphed incarnation of Mercury; that's right, that fleet-of-foot mythological fellow himself. Right now, McKay and three of her cast members -- Keith Fasciani as Tybalt, John Forest as Romeo, and Sturgis Adams as Mercury/Mercutio are finding their way through the blocking of some original text McKay has just re-inserted into the play. "'And if thou makes minstrels of us, look to hear nothing but discord,'" Adams reads off the new pages. "'Here's my fiddlestick. Here's that which will make you dance.'" A tautly-wound bundle of nervous energy burning constantly just below a calm façade, McKay never stops moving as she studies her actors and their space. She works a balcony support post like a pole dancer, twirling and sliding and clinging as she extracts the meaning of the scene from her cast, and with it, its movement. The discussion quickly falls upon "fiddlestick", its innuendo and ramifications in this new exchange. "You could be talking about your cock," McKay offers. Adams, an Überproject founding member as well as a resourceful and innovative actor who throws out multiple variations with each pass through the scene, stares thoughtfully at his text. "I thought I was talking about my cock," he says finally, as Cosmo the cat makes a sudden bold entrance stage left and strides across the stage to sprawl at Adams' feet, sniffing his shoes. The next try, Adams has a grip on his crotch Jacko-style, backing Fasciani's Tybalt up with an affectionate yet overtly sexual read of his lines. McKay likes the added playfulness this has given the scene, telling Adams the crotch-grabbing's a keeper. What about this added sexual layer -- is "HousePlague" looking to explore the ins and outs, as it were, of Elizabethan-era mores atop the other themes Überproject has added to this new mix? "Sharkespeare's puns are so naturally dirty and bawdy, it is difficult not to go there, if even for a moment," McKay, 23, says during a brief rehearsal break as she settles tentatively upon one of the red-covered benches that overlooks the stage from a horseshoe mezzanine. "But actually, I haven't put much forethought into the homoerotic tendencies of the characters' relationships in this play, which is strange, being that I am usually obsessed with that exact issue." She pauses, then adds with a laugh, "Hey, I am a Sarah Lawrence graduate after all." If sex isn't the driving force of this adaptation, then what is -- and why is it called "HousePlague" and not "Romeo and Juliet"? "The short answer is that I have Sturgis playing the character of Mercury who portrays four different characters in the play who function as Fate, Chance and Destiny. I also switch scenes around, give people different lines and replace a great deal of Shakespeare's language with dance and movement. And," she confesses, "I cut the balcony scene." McKay is soon summoned back downstairs to watch a run-through of one of choreographer Jody Ripplinger's compact, forceful dance numbers -- a dozen actors twirling in tight swing/tango sync upon the Belt's tiny stage. "This is the first day I've been stressed," McKay says, whose recent bout with mono landed her briefly in the hospital. While the music is being cued up, she traces the unpredictable trajectory of antibiotics, steroids and beer with Adams and Forest. "I woke up and my kidneys were throbbing," McKay says casually, her attention never far from what is happening on stage. Several hours later, in the Belt's drowsily-lit, haphazardly-arranged lounge, McKay reflects upon her "long answer" of how "Romeo & Juliet" became "HousePlague" -- an adaptation she did herself -- and why. Ask anyone to describe the story of Romeo and Juliet, she says, and most likely you'll get drawn a picture of a tragic love story marked with impulsive mistakes and good intentions gone awry. And then there's that balcony scene. "HousePlague" blows through the love story to reveal the subtle references to fame, fortune and chance that are "littered" throughout the text, both in language and action. Viewed this way, Shakespeare's play turned for McKay from a simple story of good lovin' gone bad to one about "the multiple faces and mysteries of destiny." Expanding the role of Mercutio into that of the mythological god Mercury allows him to bring the lovers together and then send them towards their doom "all in the pursuit of social order." "That came about when I was researching the origins of Mercutio's name," McKay discloses when asked where the inspiration came from. Inspired by the fleet-footed god's morphing prowess, McKay "urged him down from the heavens" and integrated him into Shakespeare's text as a kind of uber-manipulator of events. Überproject's maiden voyage promises considerably more than just the standard deconstructive spin put on so many classic theatrical texts by so many recent theater-school graduates in this postmodern age. "HousePlague" is highlighted by several Ripplinger-choreographed musical interludes featuring the original music of composer Nehemiah Luckett and DJ Shane Clark. ÜP is currently in negotiations with a number of recorded artists for use of their music in the show as well. Fresh takes on time-tested classics fuels Überproject's plans for subsequent shows throughout its debut season. An adaptation of Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" by another of Über's five founding members, Cassandra Bugge (the others are Hanna Cheek and Nikki Ghisel), is planned along with "Counter Play", a nationwide search for unpublished writers dedicated to new forms of narrative and inspired by the "counter cinema" of Jean-Luc Godard and Bertolt Brecht. "Art continually needs to be seen from a new perspective," an exhausted McKay says as she pulls her coat on in the fading light of the Belt bar at the end of another long day of rehearsal. "If only to serve one small function in our lives: to prevent the assumptions we base our lives upon from rusting away." McKay pauses to watch Cosmo the cat leap into the air after something only Cosmo the cat can see. "My hope, with any piece of art," she says finally, is that we can be subtly challenged on a personal, creative and political level while still being entertained." -- Brook Stowe
"HousePlague",
an Uberproject
Presentation at the Belt Theater, 336 W. 37th St., NYC. Previews April
1&2. Opens April 3. Thru April 20. Information and reservations:
212.252.5297. Copyright © 2003 The Write Word, Inc. All rights reserved. |
