It seems there are three simple rules to staging Shakespeare successfully.  One: put the play in a modern setting, like, say, a dive bar in Anytown, country unknown.  Second, inject as much action as possible into the working script, quickening the pace to modern tastes.  Third, no matter how clunky or inappropriate it may sound, do not monkey with the Bard of Avon’s dialogue. [Read more...]

Most artistic directors aren’t running around onstage with an owl puppet minutes after giving the opening curtain speech. But that’s Marcus Kyd for you, an actor-manager whose efforts with the Taffety Punk crowd over on Capitol Hill are increasingly paying dividends — and who, incidentally, makes a really good owl. [Read more...]

Theater works best when it is humble, for when it calls attention to itself it turns the men and women in the audience into critics. If you come back from a production raving about the technique of one of the actors, or about well-executed choreography or an exotic set, you have seen an exhibition, not a play. [Read more...]

Edward Kelley, one of the most famous alchemists during the English Renaissance, is the subject of Richard Byrne’s play Burn Your Bookes. What the Taffety Punk Theatre Company contributes are offbeat touches to what would normally classify as your typical period piece. [Read more...]

Death be not cool, though some have called thee all funky and dope, for thou are not so.

This is a play about people who talk about killing themselves, cobbled together from text found at pro-suicide Internet addresses and underscored with superb choreography (Paulina Guerrero) and fabulous music (written by Chad Clark and performed by his band Beauty Pill). [Read more...]

At the height of his playwriting career, with the dear memory of Hamlet still green and with some untender lines of King Lear starting to stir, Shakespeare debuted a darkly amusing little morality fable called Measure For Measure. [Read more...]

With The Faithkiller, Taffety Punk Theatre Company gives us the world premiere of a work by the gifted Washington-area playwright Gwydion Suilebhan. All hail Taffety Punk! Moreover, the play is an ambitious one, thematically challenging and technically complex.  All hail Taffety Punk again, as well as playwright Suilebhan! [Read more...]

Romeo and Juliet
by William Shakespeare
directed by Lise Bruneau
produced by Taffety Punk Theatre Company
reviewed by Tim Treanor

Taffety Punk presents its all-woman production of Shakespeare’s great Romeo and Juliet as a revenge play. Unfortunately, it is meant as revenge against the Shakespeare Theatre for its all-male production of the same play.  People!  Can’t we all just get along? [Read more...]

The Devil in His Own Words

Directed by Lise Bruneau

Produced by Taffety Punk Theatre Company

Reviewed by Ronnie Ruff

Marcus Kyd of Taffety Punk Theatre Company is super interested in that guy downstairs with the horns and a penchant for causing mischief. So what do you do if the devil is your guy?  Kyd spent a few years finding the best mentions and literary snippets of the fiery one in classic literature, the Bible and just about anywhere else. This is not to say of course that when all the research is done and texts lifted the results always work as a play – The Devil in His Own Words is what it is – a collection of over thirty examples of well delivered Satan prose from some of the most respected writers of our day and days past. Kyd is engaging as an actor, clearly in command of the material, although one hour into this tribute to the evil one we find ourselves becoming a bit weary of Flashpoint’s wooden seats from Hell and praying to God for an intermission. Director and company member Lise Bruneau keeps the show moving fluidly but the play still needs some revisions to keep the audience involved for the entire length of the performance. [Read more...]