Monthly Archives: January 2017

A guest post by Nate Chen, who portrays Lord Capulet, Juliet’s father, in our production.

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When I sat down to consider how to best play the part of THE Capulet in Romeo and Juliet, I wasn’t thinking of commerce or mercenaries. But
after reading the script, one thing that bothered me was that I couldn’t put my finger on what Capulet’s place in Verona society was supposed to be. He’s important, of course, and he wants everyone to know it. But why is he important?

A guest post by Nate Chen, who plays Lord Capulet (Juliet’s father)

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Nate first offers some background to the social and political setting of the play:

Shortly before 1000 AD an odd phenomenon started taking place in Italy. People started to immigrate into Italian cities in large numbers. Now in most feudal societies of the era that kind of mass immigration was impossible – you swore your allegiance to a feudal landlord quite early, and paid rent on the land you worked for the rest of your life when you weren’t serving as a foot soldier in your liege’s army. But in Italy, city denizens – or citizens for short – were freed of their allegiance by virtue of living behind really thick walls and the assurances of the city government. This, along with a handful of other guarantees, was one of the first instances of people having rights backed by government.

For most people, the principle of being free of a renter’s life wouldn’t be enough to convince them to uproot from the familiar and go somewhere else.

     We have spent a number of years kicking around the idea of doing Shakespeare on our Home Stage. But it never seemed like the right time. Until now!  Having found the right show and the right concept to bring it to fresh life…God saw to it that we assembled the right cast, too. Young, enthusiastic and very hard working, they have risen to the challenge of Shakespeare’s language, AND playing him in the round, AND adding sword fights and Elizabethan dance.