In the first of a four-part series on Shakespeare\u27s The Taming of the Shrew, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner introduces two high-concept professional productions of the play — one in Ashland, Oregon at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and one in Portland, Oregon at the Portland Shakespeare Project

Pollack-Pelzner, Daniel

English

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Linfield College DigitalCommons@Linfield Faculty Publications Faculty Scholarship & Creative Works 7-17-2013 Summer of Shrew, Part 1: A Tale of Two Cities Daniel Pollack-Pelzner Linfield College, dpollack@linfield.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/englfac_pubs  Part of the Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons DigitalCommons@Linfield Citation Pollack-Pelzner, Daniel, "Summer of Shrew, Part 1: A Tale of Two Cities" (2013). Faculty Publications. Published Version. Submission 62. https://digitalcommons.linfield.edu/englfac_pubs/62 This Published Version is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It is brought to you for free via open access, courtesy of DigitalCommons@Linfield, with permission from the rights-holder(s). Your use of this Published Version must comply with the Terms of Use for material posted in DigitalCommons@Linfield, or with other stated terms (such as a Creative Commons license) indicated in the record and/or on the work itself. For more information, or if you have questions about permitted uses, please contact digitalcommons@linfield.edu. Summer of Shrew, Part 1: a tale of two citiesIn Ashland and Portland, Shakespeare's battle of the sexes takes center stage. What's up with that?July 17, 2013 // THEATER // Oregon ArtsWatchBy DANIEL POLLACK-PELZNERIn Oregon, it’s the summer of Shrew. Shakespeare’s dangerously entertaining, endlessly controversial comedy “The Taming of the Shrew” boasts two high-concept professional productions this season. Down south, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival sets Kate and Petruchio—those sparring, witty, violent, stubborn, possibly loving combatants—on a rockabilly boardwalk, strutting and fretting beneath neon signs while their snappy supporting cast wonders whether these tattooed soulmates will ever sing a duet.Lucentio (Wayne T. Carr), Tranio (John Tufts), Oregon Shakespeare Festival.Photo: Jenny GrahamAnd up north, the Portland Shakespeare Project opened its “Taming of the Shrew” last Friday, decked inthe candy colors of a ’60s TV comedy, with Petruchio and Kate perhaps the only sane people in afarcical entertainment ordered as a prank on a drunk guy in the front row.Portland Shakes: From left, Kate (Maureen Porter), Baptista (Gary Powell),Petruchio (James Farmer), Lucentio (Peter Platt), Bianca (Foss Curtis), Gremio(David Heath). Photo: David Kinder.For Bardophiles, it’s a rare chance to compare two fun, smart, thought-provoking takes on a popularplay. For Shakespeare scholars, it’s wunderbar! Full disclosure: I’m one of those scholars. This dubious distinction comes with a title, in fact: I’m theScholar-in-Residence at the Portland Shakespeare Project, and I was a visiting scholar last month at theOregon Shakespeare Festival. Thanks to a grant from the Linfield Center for the Northwest, my studentsand I consulted on the Portland Shakes production, and I’m giving talks to Ashland and Portlandaudiences about the play. So it’s certainly my summer of Shrew. But I hope it’s more than mine. You don’t have to spend weeks researching Shrew, comparing textual variants, reading academiccriticism, discussing the play with actors and directors, and screening film versions to find it a greatoccasion for thinking about the definition of marriage, the nature of comedy, and the place thatShakespeare holds in our culture. Since that’s how I’ve been spending my summer, though, I can start the conversation by posing somecentral questions that scholars often raise about the play. And I’ll share how seeing Shrew in rehearsaland performance has challenged me to reconsider the answers I thought I’d found. So tune in to the next few installments to find out: Is Shakespeare’s shrew really tamed? DoesShakespeare’s play have a lost ending that changes its meaning? Why have we forgotten about a sequelto Shrew that turns its gender roles upside down? And why do we care whether Shakespeare agrees withour social views at all? Maybe this will become your summer of Shrew, too. As the Portland Shakes banner promises, it’sanything but tame.NOTES:For a rich, lively introduction to the play’s language and central concerns, I always start with therelevant chapter in Marjorie Garber’s Shakespeare After All. Yes, she was my dissertation adviser,but I’m not the only who likes her book.If you’re in the car or on a run, you can listen to an accessible overview of the play’s criticalcontroversies in Emma Smith’s podcast on Shrew for her invaluable Oxford series, “ApproachingShakespeare.” *ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dr. Daniel Pollack-Pelzner is Assistant Professor of English at Linfield College and scholar in residence at the Portland Shakespeare Project. He will lead a pre-show discussion about “The Taming of the Shrew” at 6:30 tonight (Wednesday, July 17) at Artists Rep.*TOMORROW: Who does the taming, and who’s getting tamed?FRIDAY: A Sly figure and an alternate text shift the balance of the play.SATURDAY: In our final installment, a long-forgotten sequel further tames the men.

Summer of Shrew, Part 1: A Tale of Two Cities

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Summer of Shrew, Part 1: A Tale of Two Cities

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