News: The Firebird Project Presents Romeo and Juliet Retelling "Nurse!" June 15-23



The Firebird Project, an independent theater and arts education company dedicated to innovative original productions and the reinterpretation of classic plays, is excited to announce its upcoming production of Nurse!, Ayun Halliday’s retelling of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet...and she has some corrections! The production is set to run from June 15-23 at Actors Guild Hall, The Bechdel Project, New York Society Library, and Quimby’s Bookstore.

Inspired in part by the life of Kate Claxton, ingénue turned entrepreneur-of-a-certain age, who made misfortune into a meal ticket, spending decades recounting the events of the Brooklyn Theatre Fire to sold-out crowds, Juliet’s Nurse hits the lecture circuit to set the record straight. Teenagers! Aging! Sex! Shakespeare! Nurse demands the last word on the greatest love story ever told.

Ayun Halliday is the co-founder of Theater of the Apes, creator and host of its book-based variety show, Necromancers of the Public Domain, and Chief Primatologist of the long running, award-winning 
East Village Inky zine. Author of nine books, she has been writing and performing in her own work since joining the NeoFuturists in 1989. With direction by Spencer Kayden, Halliday embodies Juliet’s Nurse beyond the scope of the original text, bringing a complicated humanity to the role. Nurse laments what occurred, yet finds moments for indignance, explores her own regrets, and most importantly, exposes the bloody truth of the matter. Halliday (sometimes literally) dances around this classic tale in surprising and resonant ways, speaking to the present moment and just how quickly times change.

Join The Firebird Project at four off-beat venues for an evening of laughter as Nurse! reconsiders the English canon’s most romanticized tragedy.

Content Warning: Discussions of violence, sex, infant death, teen murder and suicide (literary).

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit The Firebird Project's official website: thefirebirdproject.org/nurse.

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