Performance Images by Kimberley Mead: Big Love by Charles Mee, Shrewd Productions at the Rollins Theatre,

Images taken by Kimberley Mead at dress rehearsal:

presents

Big Love

a comedy by Charles Mee

directed by Robert Faires

November 10 - 27, Thursdays - Sundays at 8 p.m.
Rollins Studio Theatre at the Long Center for the Performing Arts, Riverside at S. First (click for map)

Buy Tickets through The Long Center -- Thursdays & Sundays: $20; Fridays & Saturdays: $25
Students: $15; Special industry night peformance: Wednesday, November 16 - $17

50 runaway brides seek refuge in a villa on the Italian coast in this hilarious and heartbreaking comedy by Charles Mee. When 50 determined grooms drop out of the sky, the villa erupts in a clash of wills, song and dance, romantic reverie, violent fits, satin ribbon, and one final, unforgettable showdown.

Click to go to AustinLiveTheatre.com for additional performance images by Kimberley Mead. . . .

Video: Cast and Director Discuss Big Love by Charles Mee, Shrewd Productions, November 10 - 27

Video by Lydia Nelson via link provided by Shrewd Productions:

presents

Big Love

a comedy by Charles Mee

directed by Robert Faires

November 10 - 27, Thursdays - Sundays at 8 p.m.
Rollins Studio Theatre at the Long Center for the Performing Arts, Riverside at S. First (click for map)

Buy Tickets through The Long Center -- Thursdays & Sundays: $20; Fridays & Saturdays: $25
Students: $15; Special industry night peformance: Wednesday, November 16 - $17

50 runaway brides seek refuge in a villa on the Italian coast in this hilarious and heartbreaking comedy by Charles Mee. When 50 determined grooms drop out of the sky, the villa erupts in a clash of wills, song and dance, romantic reverie, violent fits, satin ribbon, and one final, unforgettable showdown.

[Apple users: can't see the video? Click to go to YouTube]

Robert Faires directs this tulle covered, rice throwing, dangerous confection of a play. Big Love features some of Austin's finest theatrical talent, including Aaron Alexander, Lana Dieterich, Shannon Grounds, Anne Hulsman, Rob Matney, Nathan Osburn, Michael Slefinger, Andrea Smith, Rommel Sulit and Julianna Elizabeth Wright with lighting design by Patrick Anthony, set by Ia Enstara, costumes by Pam Friday, choreography by Toby Minor and sound by Buzz Moran.

Sharing the Love...
Shrewd Productions has set aside a small number of discounted tickets offered via Austix.

[11 left as of 2:45 p.m., Wednesday, November 9]

Click the heart below to purchase from Austix

Buy Tickets through Austix

Images by Kimberley Mead: Big Love by Charles Mee, Shrew Productions at the Rollins Theatre, November 10 - 27

Images by Kimberley Mead, received directly:

presents

Big Love

a comedy by Charles Mee

directed by Robert Faires

November 10 - 27, 2011
Thursdays - Sundays at 8 p.m.
Rollins Studio Theatre at the Long Center for the Performing Arts

50 runaway brides seek refuge in a villa on the Italian coast in this hilarious and heartbreaking comedy by Charles Mee. When 50 determined grooms drop out of the sky, the villa erupts in a clash of wills, song and dance, romantic reverie, violent fits, satin ribbon, and one final, unforgettable showdown.

Click to view additional images by Kimberley Mead at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

Funding Appeal: Big Love by Charles Mee, Shrewd Productions at the Rollins Theatre

An appeal by Shrewd Productions via Indiegogo.com for $2000 to help finance its three-week staging in November at the Rollins Theatre, Long Center, of Charles Mee's Big Love:

Shrewd Productions is raising funds for our next theatrical production, Big Love by Charles L. Mee, running at the Long Center for the Performing Arts Nov. 10-27. Big Love is a BIG step up for Shrewd, as we launch our most lavish production yet in Austin's highest-profile venue.

About Big Love 50 runaway brides seek refuge in a villa on the Italian coast in this hilarious, dark comedy by Charles Mee. When 50 determined grooms drop out of the sky, the villa erupts in a clash of wills, song, dance, romantic reverie, violent fits, satin ribbon and one final, unforgettable showdown.

What We Need & What You Get

Shrewd Productions is committed to compensating our artists - all of our artists, to the greatest extent that we can. We believe professional actors, designers, directors, stage and production managers and crew all deserve to be compensated fairly for their work. Your contributions will go to pay the fine cast and crew of this very BIG show, including Robert Faires, directing this tulle covered, rice throwing, dangerous confection of a play, featuring some of Austin's finest theatrical talent, including: Aaron Alexander, Lana Dieterich, Shannon Grounds, Anne Hulsman, Rob Matney, Nathan Osburn, Michael Slefinger, Andrea Smith, Rommel Sulit and Julianna Elizabeth Wright with lighting design by Patrick Anthony, set by Ia Enstara, costumes by Pam Friday, choreography by Toby Minor, sound by Buzz Moran, production management by Melinda Parr, and prop design and stage management by Johnny Gonzalez.

Click to check out the fantastic perks at www.indiegogo.com, and be a part of the big fun that is Big Love!

Upcoming: Big Love by Charles Mee, Shrewd Productions at the Rollins Theatre, Long Center, November 10 - 27

Received directly:

presents

Big Love

a comedy by Charles Mee

directed by Robert Faires

November 10 - 27, 2011
Thursdays - Sundays at 8 p.m.
Rollins Studio Theatre at the Long Center for the Performing Arts

50 runaway brides seek refuge in a villa on the Italian coast in this hilarious and heartbreaking comedy by Charles Mee. When 50 determined grooms drop out of the sky, the villa erupts in a clash of wills, song and dance, romantic reverie, violent fits, satin ribbon, and one final, unforgettable showdown.

Based on the oldest play in the western world, The Suppliants by Aeschylus, Mee's modern take is at once an unflinching look at the themes of justice and revenge, and an ode to the enduring power of love.

Robert Faires directs this tulle covered, rice throwing, dangerous confection of a play. Big Love features some of Austin's finest theatrical talent, including Aaron Alexander, Lana Dieterich, Shannon Grounds, Anne Hulsman, Rob Matney, Nathan Osburn, Michael Slefinger, Andrea Smith, Rommel Sulit and Julianna Elizabeth Wright with lighting design by Patrick Anthony, set by Ia Enstara, costumes by Pam Friday, choreography by Toby Minor and sound by Buzz Moran.

Presented by special arrangement with International Creative Management, Inc.

Big Love by Charles Mee, Texas State University, October 6 - 11

Charles Mee's quirky fable Big Love is a reworking of the Greek legend of the Danaids, drawing in part on the earliest extant fragment of Western drama, The Suppliants. It's a story of the war between men and women.

In that text Aeschylus presents about the first third of the story of the 50 daughters of Danaeus and the 50 sons of his twin brother Aegyptus, all of the youngsters being the great-great-grandchildren of the union of Zeus with Io, a mortal princess. The women reject their suitor cousins and flee with their father Danaeus to Argos, where they seek and receive sanctuary by vote of the Argive citizens. The ships of Aegyptus arrive, a herald and soldiers try to drag the women away from the Argive shrine to Zeus, and the King of Argos rebuffs them. The young women rejoice, the Aegyptians withdraw with threats, and the manuscript ends just as things are getting interesting.

In the legend, Danaeus eventually yields his daughters to the 50 young men, but he secretly instructs them to kill their new husbands on their wedding nights. All obey accept one, who has fallen in love with her man. She's brought to trial but successfully defended by Aphrodite, the goddess of love.

Although it's a fragment, Aeschylus's text is heady stuff. In Morshead's 19th century translation, for example, the chorus of young women laments,

I dare not, I dare not abide: my heart yearns, eager to fly;
And dark is the cast of my thought; I shudder and tremble for fear.
My father looked forth and beheld; I die of the sight that draws near.
And for me be the strangling cord, the halter made ready by Fate,
Before to my body draws nigh the man of my horror and hate.
Before I will own him as lord, as handmaid to Hades I go!


Aeschylus was setting up conflicts involving forced matrimony, the guests' right to hospitality and asylum and the inviolability of sacred places -- with a strong emphasis on the honors and obligations of democracy.

Charles Mee proclaims himself a "reworker." His website makes available the texts of his own plays, including this one, for potential transformation and re-use. He explains the concept: "Please feel free to take the plays from this website and use them freely as a resource for your own work: that is to say, don't just make some cuts or rewrite a few passages or re-arrange them or put in a few texts that you like better, but pillage the plays as I have pillaged the structures and contents of the plays of Euripides and Brecht and stuff out of Soap Opera Digest and the evening news and the internet, and build your own, entirely new, piece--and then, please, put your own name to the work that results. "

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com. . . .

Upcoming: Big Love by Charles Mee, Texas State University, San Marcos, October 6 - 11

Found on-line at Texas State University, San Marcos:

Big Love

by Charles Mee
Directed by Caleb Straus
Oct. 6-10 at 7:30 p.m. and Oct. 11 at 2 p.m.
$10 general, $7 students

When fifty women escape to Italy at the last minute of a forced wedding to fifty respective grooms, their grooms come looking for them. It appears the wedding is on, but the sisters will stop at absolutely nothing to be free to make up their own minds. Charles Mee's modern look at Aeschylus's Greek tragedy The Suppliant Women explores the dynamics of power in romantic relationships and is both a powerful drama about the battle of the sexes as well as "a physically and intellectually explosive comedy".

Box Office: 512-245-2204