The plays of Wiliam Shakespeare are a staple for Frog & Peach Theatre Company, who have found ways to give Shakespeare’s classics a joyous twist for years. Many productions try to update Shakespeare or make his works more exciting, but Frog & Peach succeed simply by having a good time. The next Shakespeare play on their agenda is The Taming of the Shrew, and stars DazMann Still and Amy Frances Quint opened up about what makes this interpretation stand out and why it’s engaging them as performers.

Brittany Frederick: Frog & Peach has done a lot of Shakespeare. What was the conversation that led the company to choose The Taming of the Shrew this time around?

Amy Frances Quint: This is sometimes a tough play, but it’s a great play—and we don’t want to shy away from doing it. And then the election happened, and it got tougher, but I think more necessary than ever. There’s a lot that still feels kind of new and alarming, and we’re processing it, and we’re doing this play that reflects a lot of those things that I wish it didn’t anymore.

It’s been really interesting working through some of these things, and holding the mirror up to nature as it were, when all of a sudden that nature is a lot more similar to the world of the play than we might have expected it to be a year or so ago. And I don’t have pat answers about that, but I think it’s a really important and meaningful and nourishing time to be working on this play for us, as we’re trying to figure out the world we’re in and who we are in it.

How much does the company’s experience with Shakespeare as a whole help you as individual actors? Does it make the process easier or more rewarding?

DazMann Still: I’ll say it helps me immensely. Amy is a Shakespeare vet, and so having her as a scene partner is such a gift for me. I am still cutting my teeth on Shakespeare. I’ve done probably five or six Shakespeare plays in my career total, and so I still feel relatively new.

Having people who are so well informed on the canon, have done this show before, and are very familiar with other productions, and what the world of this play can look like helps to feed me, and helps me to be able to explore what choices I can make if something needs to change. I’m still working to find more, and I’m lucky to be in a room with people who can keep on assisting me with that. So I’m grateful.

Quint: He’s a natural. He’s really smart, and he gets this stuff and he can just open his mouth and speak this language, and it’s as though you and I were just having a conversation, which is an immense gift. We all love Shakespeare so much, and it’s so important to us to show other people that this is for you too. This is not some weird thing up on a shelf that’s only for fuddy duddy Oxford people, and that’s an amazing gift to open that portal for people, which is a wonderful asset to the company. We all strive to do that, and we all love it and have this need to communicate it.

But he has a really lovely way of just taking it and seeing what the crossover is with us in our day to day lives, and making those connections, which I think is just as important as knowing every esoteric character and play in the canon. We can get trapped in that stuff too. It’s a double-edged sword. It’s a wonderful asset. But also, you want to keep it fresh. You want to just make it about the people.

With The Taming of the Shrew in particular, are there elements that you feel people need to know, or that were particularly unique or challenging?

Quint: So much of Shakespeare is actually totally the way we talk, and there’s only this small portion that is different words. That can throw people off, whereas if they just kind of let that go and are open, they’ll get more than they think they will.

I will say, for this play, I would recommend people maybe just scan the plot, because [there are] all these characters who dress up as each other… all these like sort of comedic intricacies in this play in particular, that if you have read it and you just know to expect that, you won’t be tripped up. It’s a minor thing, but that way you won’t be worried that wait, is this because I’m not understanding Shakespeare? Because it’s not. There are people masquerading as other people.

Scan it quickly for a very vague plot overview, just so you know they’re all these people taking each other’s parts and so you’re open to that. But as long as you don’t put up those barriers and you’re open, just go along for the ride. It’s our job to make our emotions and our intentions clear to you. We’re just talking about people going through emotions and situations that we all go through.

What are some parts of this production that you’ve loved so far?

Still: One of my favorite little bits in the show is seeing how Lynnea [Benson] directs the servants, and how they end up being brought into the world, and how they embellish the environment. Little mannerisms and little relationships that you see, the flirtations that go on in the background, kind of just highlights these little moments of passion and friction that exist within the story. To see that in other characters that aren’t necessarily the leads is exciting and it’s fun, it’s playful, and it helps my imagination. It stirs my imagination in the middle of rehearsal, and those are the types of things that are surprises for me that I enjoy.

Quint: The world of this play as we’ve been rehearsing it has gotten richer and richer, and that’s been quite wonderful and fun to see… There’s this whole world of characters, and a lot of them go through pretty large transformations, and there aren’t any simple wrongs or rights in this play. You may go into it with preconceptions about well, these people are the villains and this person is the victim, and that’s not reality. Everyone is a little bit flawed and a little bit right, and we’re just trying to process the world we’re in and make the best choices for ourselves. And sometimes we don’t do it as thoughtfully as we should.

That’s what’s been really interesting, especially having done the play before. It’s a different cast, it’s a different world. It feels very different. I’ve done this play before, but I may as well not have. It’s been a really new and exciting and interesting and healing experience for me personally, just trying to process the world that we’re in. It’s been a real privilege to spend time with these other actors and artists and this play, and I hope that our audience has a similar experience sitting through something that is a little messy and a little complicated and a lot funny and a lot real.

For more information on The Taming of the Shrew and to get tickets, visit the Frog & Peach Theatre Company website. Photo Credit: Maria Baranova/Courtesy of Skollar PR.

Article content is (c)2020-2025 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.