The Resurgens Theatre Company produces the plays of Shakespeare's contemporaries (Marlowe, Jonson, Middleton, Fletcher, etc.), as well as those of the Bard, through an enhanced prosodic approach to verse-speaking. We frequently employ “original practices” as a means to augment our performative efforts; however, we do not attempt to recreate an “authentic” Renaissance experience on a twenty-first-century stage. Instead, we seek to explore the complex, aesthetically charged dialogue between Elizabethan/Jacobean verse dramas and their poetic/rhetorical trans-historical resonances—to revitalize “scores for lost voices,” we would say. So, rather than offer a museum piece constructed solely to satisfy academic curiosity, we look to engender a lively artistic engagement with the present moment—a present moment filtered through the production modes of the past. And for our shows, those practices may include any or all of the following elements: audience interaction, judicious editing, minimalist staging, organic music, original pronunciation, Renaissance costuming, same-sex casting, thematic doubling, uninterrupted performances, and universal lighting.
