Devising Shakespeare

With its new title, Henry 5 Live From Times Square wasn’t exactly ‘By William Shakespeare’. The piece was ‘Created, Designed and Performed’ by Thaddeus Phillips, the company’s artistic director and the auteur of the event although not actually its director: that was Tatiana Mallarino, Phillips’s outside eyes, as well as his partner in the company and in real life. Things get blurred a bit in devised work, which this surely was. For his part, Shakespeare provided the majority of the lines spoken in the piece, and saying all of Shakespeare’s lines and playing all of his characters while running all the tech from within the tiny tchotchke booth formed the task and the action at the core of the event. Shakespeare was even a significant element of the mise en scène, although I didn’t realize it until I helped break down the set after the show. When I brought the production to my university in February of 2006, Phillips hadn’t done the piece for a while, so most of the Shakespeare text was typed up and cut out and taped up all around the insides of the set. Although I sat only about 12 feet away, I was never aware of Phillips actually relying on any of his cheat sheets.