Shakespeare’s Sister: Actress lives out a dream in Urbanite world premiere

Livy Scanlon loves Shakespeare and when she takes the stage for the world premiere of the one-woman show “Judith” at Urbanite Theatre, she will be living out a dream she has had for several years.

Watching other actors perform solo shows in a theater she was running in Boston made Scanlon want one of her own. Scanlon had an idea about a woman who moves to London, dresses like a man, takes the name William Shakespeare and becomes a successful playwright, creating all the works that we know so well by that name. Judith, as the character came to be known, would also fall in love with a woman and be forced to make a choice about revealing her true identity and losing her career, or staying hidden and losing the love of her life.

Scanlon also wanted her dog, Rusty, to be in it.

Many of those initial ideas – though not Rusty – made their way into the new play “Judith,” by Katie Bender, who worked closely with Scanlon in developing the original concept. “I don’t have playwriting skills and I reached out to Katie because I had known her work and seen another solo show she had written for herself,” Scanlon said.

The play that opens Jan. 5 is inspired in part by Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own,” in which she created a fictional character, Judith, who is supposedly Shakespeare’s sister, who actually wrote his plays. Woolf’s point was that a woman would not have been given a chance to develop her skills the way Shakespeare did.

So Scanlon is playing Shakespeare’s sister who has come to London to help save her brother’s reputation during a time of deep religious divide between Protestants and Catholics and, in the process, she is given a chance to become the writer she wanted to be.

Bender is a playwright, performer and theater maker who has written a number of works that have been produced at theaters across the country.

Scanlon is working with director Brendon Fox, a former faculty member at the FSU/Asolo Conservatory who now lives near Scanlon’s own Hanover Theatre in Worcester, Massachusetts. Fox directed Urbanite’s second show, “Reborning.”

“It was exciting to be part of that first season. That’s a huge trust,” he said. “I had never been part of theater in embryo. I felt that Urbanite tapped into an audience for exciting new work and coming back now it feels the same, plus even more.”

Developing a new play

Fox staged a workshop reading of “Judith” in March that was presented to both a live and streaming audience. “The goal was to introduce the play to our audience in Worcester and try to attract producers in other parts of the country who couldn’t make it to Worcester on a Monday night reading,” Scanlon said.

The world premiere in Sarasota is a collaboration with Scanlon’s Hanover Theatre, where the play will be presented in the spring.

Summer Wallace, Urbanite’s producing artistic director, said Shakespeare is a hook, but audiences don’t need to know anything about the playwright. “If you do, you may get a little Easter egg along the way, but you don’t have to have seen any Shakespeare or even know the name Shakespeare,” she said.

Fox said it’s a portrait of a developing artist trying to pitch herself to the prominent actor, theater owner and manager Richard Burbage. “She is like, I have so many ideas, just give me a shot to let me collaborate with you,” he said. “How do you give yourself permission to say I can write and people should know about me? You have to bungee jump.”

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Scanlon plays multiple characters during the piece, including Judith, William, playwright Christopher Marlowe and a fictional character named Agnes who becomes Judith’s love interest.

Finding a way to fit in

She came up with the idea because “When I came into the industry there really weren’t many roles for a queer non-binary boyish looking woman like myself, and I spent a lot of my early career being not true to myself, performing femininity and trying to go for the roles that do exist. It’s just like another form of being closeted. As I moved more and more into my own producing and directing, I was casting myself in things that made more and more sense for me as an actor. I wanted to create something that is for me, but more importantly for actors like me to have a role that is theirs. I hope I’m not the only one.”

It is stretching her skills as a performer, being on stage by herself for 75 to 80 minutes.

“From a pure acting skill level, it is a great workout for me, from the memorizing to the stamina, to the different characterizations.”

There is a heightened language in Bender’s writing to reflect the styles of both Shakespeare and Woolf.

“Audiences will feel smart. There’s a champagne effect, a bubbly response. The play is treating the audience with respect,” Fox said.

‘Judith’

By Katie Bender. Directed by Brendon Fox. Runs Jan. 5-Feb. 18 at Urbanite Theatre, 1487 Second St., Sarasota. Tickets are $42, $28 for 40 and younger and $5 for students. 941-321-1397; urbanitehteatre.com

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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Urbanite Theatre world premiere offers a different of Shakespeare