by Howard Brenton     directed by Jeff Mills

A UTOPIAN FRENZY OF FREE LOVE

Bloody Poetry chronicles the tumultuous relationships between three literary revolutionaries: Mary Shelley, her husband Percy Shelley, and Lord George Byron. From Byron’s and Shelley’s first meeting and the inception of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein to Percy Shelley’s tragic death, the three exiled writers live, love and write together in a utopian frenzy of hedonistic excess. Their poetic cries for social justice and artistic insurrection are shadowed by the potentially haunting consequences of their indulgences.

The costumes, scenery and lighting are designed to provide a “silhouette” of a world, rather than a fully realistic depiction of one in the ACTING UP FRONT program. ACTING UP FRONT allows for an intense focus on character, relationships and the actor’s ability to create an imaginative world for an audience where the actors and the words are at the forefront of the production. This approach allows for tremendous freedom, creativity and engagement of the audience, and it allows us all to hear these great plays in a fresh, newly revealing way.