A Plague on Both Their Houses.

When I fell in love with cards.

In 2005, the local town theatre departed from their usual musical productions and had a meeting with the bard. We took on his most well known play, "Romeo and Juliet." The director was concerned about our rural audience being able to follow the story and created a construct to make the relationships easier to follow. She decided to introduce a playing cards theme. The Montagues were represented by the Spades, and wore blue. The Capulets were Hearts, in red. The royal family was in Diamonds, of course, and wore gold. The servant class were the Clubs, and wore neutral colors. The suits were reflected in hemlines and necklines where possible, and in "tattoos" on the foreheads of the men and cheeks of the women.

To introduce the card theme, as well as the fated, star-crossed lover idea, one of my best friends played the narrator as a gypsy fortune teller. With a deck of cards in hand, she started the show.

We used a quite bare stage for this production, uncommon for the group, and used several eight-foot-tall playing cards to delineate space and define different settings. And of course, I made the cards up as portraits of the actors. (I only wish they had told me what their costuming plans were before I got started... oh well.) In scenes at the Capulet household, we put up the portraits/cards of Juliet and her parents. When we were in the town commons, we put out the highest card we'd made in each suit. During some interpretive dance moments throughout the show, we put out the Montagues on one side and the Capulets on the other (see top photo). When the time came to visit the graveyard towards the end of the show, we turned all the cards around to their reverse, and scattered them around as massive tombstones, through which the crowd could meander on their way to the Capulet monument. The reverse of the cards could also be seen throughout the show on the backdrop (as seen in the top picture).


I also had the opportunity to play Mercutio, one of Shakespeare's best loved comedians. He was a blast to play. I curled my hair, I wore bright orange, and I was never onstage without a bottle. Playing someone so loud and over-the-top, and completely contrary to my natural state was a learning and growing experience for me. I think the young lady who played Tybalt enjoyed killing me/Mercutio a whole lot more than I enjoyed dying. Death scenes are not my cup of tea.

I also learned a lot about cards. Before this show, I had seldom played cards, and knew nothing about their history. It was amazing to research the history of cards, and see how the different suits had developed through the years, through different geographic regions, and so on. This show began an ongoing fixation with cards, fueled by rereading classics like "Alice in Wonderland," and has even led me to work on creating my own deck of hand painted cards, which I'm sure I will post once I have something ready to present.

Photography in this entry by Bradley Gayford