Today’s Date Monday, June 18th
Show Title Volpone, or The Fox
Director Mary Finch
Assistant Directors Miranda McPherson and Chase O’Neill
Production Intern Abraham Joyner-Meyers
Rehearsal Room The Tyson Center in the Blackfriars Theatre
What we did
After learning to use some of the special features of the Blackfriars’ stage, the cast of Volpone (fresh from auditions) headed downstairs for the first read-through of the text. After each section, the cast stopped to talk over the material, and title the action of the scene.
Quick and Quotable
From the play
Jonson’s language can be dense, but spoken aloud, the comedy of Volpone is clear. The cast laughed together at this dialogue between the trickster Mosca and the hard-of-hearing Corbaccio.
MOSCA: Your worship is a precious ass!
CORBACCIO: What say’st thou?
MOSCA: I do desire your worship to make haste, sir.
From the director
In reference to the ASC’s competition for companion plays for Shakespeare’s classics, our director suggested a new story that needed to be told. “If anybody creates Jonson’s New Contemporaries, somebody needs to write the riveting story of Avocatori Number 4” who tries to arrange a marriage between his daughter and the play’s villain.
From the cast
As a new subtitle for the play, the cast suggested, Volpone, or The Plot Sickens.
Production Insights
Earlier in the day, campers and staff explored copies of Jonson’s 1640 folio, brought to camp by Dr. Kate McPherson. It was exciting to see one of the original printings of the play we’ll be bringing to life during the next three weeks.
Abraham Joyner-Meyers
Abraham Joyner-Meyers is a fiddler, a juggler, and a huge Shakespeare nerd. He completed watching the Shakespearean canon in the fall after seeing ASC’s production of The Fall of King Henry (Henry VI, Part 3). His passion for the Bard also led him to attend ASCTC for two summers, where he acted in Two Gentleman of Verona and Much Ado About Nothing. When Abe is not furiously reading, seeing, or acting in Shakespeare plays, he’ll often be found teaching himself to play new instruments, dancing at contras and with Morris teams, or training with his school archery team. He just completed his freshman year in the dual degree program between Harvard University and Berklee College of Music.