BottleMark: Bottle caps and Bardolatry

3.14.2013

Bottle caps and Bardolatry

For those of you who know me in the real world, you know I've got one of the quirkiest combinations of passions. It's time to confess to you all: I make custom bottle caps for a living, and I do Shakespeare. Wait, what?

Forsooth, I speak the truth! In fact, Shakespeare got me into bottle caps: I met Cameron through Rice University's Baker Shakespeare program, and he even proposed dressed as Prospero at the end of a Tempest rehearsal with a Shakespearean line he said on stage to me two years before ("Will you have me, lady?"). Thankfully Shakespeare left me free to give my own answer that time. When you have the Bard to thank for both your living and your love, you call it Bardolatry.

For the last ten weeks, I've been hard at work every evening directing The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare's most controversial play, for Baker Shakespeare at Rice University. At this Saturday night's cast party, we're popping the top on these bad boys.

An ESB brewed with a vengeance.

An English Brown Ale: as beer as beer gets!

So if you're in Houston, TX this weekend, consider catching our last three performances of The Merchant of Venice!

In this most problematic of Shakespeare's comedies, Shylock the Jew seeks a pound of flesh from Antonio the Christian while three couples fall in (and out of) love. All that glisters is not gold in this equal parts funny and frightening production, set in all the opulence and prejudice of Renaissance Venice.