Summer Shakes

This summer star-crossed lovers will off themselves in downtown Portland, and a bitch of epic proportions will wreck havoc at various parks. The mayhem comes to us courtesy of Portland Actors Ensemble, a company that has staged free outdoor Shakespeare productions every summer since 1970.
The season opens with Romeo & Juliet, this year’s installment in PAE’s Twilight Tragedie series. The production runs from July 6 to July 21 at Lovejoy Fountain Park. This year’s touring production is The Taming of the Shrew, a catty comedy about a man who gradually quells his wife’s fiery temper. The show makes its way to six metro-area parks from July 28 to September 3.
Local theater veteran John Monteverde directs Romeo & Juliet, reviving the modernized version of the classic that he staged for the Blue Monkey Theater Company in February. His interpretation of the tragic romance has no explicit queer content, but he suspects that the show’s dramatic costumes will appeal to queer viewers with fashion savvy.
Monteverde sets his version in contemporary Italy, using the battle between Romeo and Juliet’s families as a means of spoofing the battle between the Armani and Versace clothing empires. “Lady Capulet is styled after Donatella Versace,” he says.
For the Blue Monkey production Monteverde designed the set to resemble an indoor fashion runway. Of course the Lovejoy Fountain location forces the fashion show to go alfresco. “Now it’s an outdoor runway,” says Monteverde. “I like the strutting feel of the models. The men strut and preen.”
From the songs by Offspring to the Goth outfits and makeup worn by the teenage characters, the production boasts some serious punk attitude. Monteverde called on young costume designer Devin Clancy to ensure that the hip factor of the February production is intact in the great outdoors.
Clancy – a self-described “queer youth” and “equal opportunity lover” – is a Portland native who is currently on break from her undergraduate studies at Illinois Wesleyan University.
“I went through a Goth phase,” she says. “I also went through a high fashion phase.”
When she’s not creating or reinforcing costumes, Clancy has taken some time to reflect on a play that’s still timely 400 years after The Bard wrote it.
“There’s a lot to be drawn from it,” she says. “Fighting is not the right answer, and you shouldn’t outlaw connections between groups.”
Heed these words from Monteverde if you think you’d rather get rabies than watch a Shakespeare play: “This is one of his most beautiful and pure love stories, and it has some of his dirtiest jokes. And this version has plenty of swordplay and violence, amped up with a rock and roll feel.”


Visit http://www.portlandactors.com/ for dates, locations and showtimes.