Sonnets tell a romantic tale in Sarasota production of ‘Shakespeare’s Lovers’

There aren’t many writers who will freely match their own words with those of William Shakespeare, but actress, director and playwright Katherine Michelle Tanner has no fears about it with her production “Shakespeare’s Lovers.”

The show, which had a preview run last summer at the first Squeaky Wheel Fringe Festival in Sarasota, returns Dec. 1-17 at Tanner’s new Tree Fort Productions Projects theater company. It features 29 of Shakespeare’s sonnets, unedited and untouched, and 19 originals by Tanner, performed by one man and one woman with a narrator helping to tie things together.

“It is daunting and I was tentative to put my name next to such a person,” Tanner said. “But when I did the research on his sonnets, I learned that he hid them and kept them to himself for a long time.”

The sonnets were first published together in 1609, seven years before his death.

“The mere fact that they were kind of his for so long, almost like a journal, I get that. He was working out the kinks,” she said.

Tanner started thinking about the show that would become “Shakespeare’s Lovers” when she spent time in England during her sophomore year of college and saw a lot of theater. She visited Shakespeare’s home in Stratford-Upon-Avon where “there were all of these well-known actors doing sonnets out in the lobby, kind of like a meditation of sorts. I thought to myself, they’re so beautiful but we never hear them.”

She thought about the sonnets for many years, studying about 60 of them – he wrote 154 – and started figuring out a way to give them a new and different context by crafting her own to be interspersed.

The sonnets are “deeply personal and they take you on a journey with just a few lines,” she said.

Act one is called “First Love,” which Tanner describes as a “together play where they first meet.” Act II is “Lost Love,” and Act III is “Lasting Love” in which the man and woman come together.

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Tanner starred in the play last summer as O, with actor Derek Brookens as the character named H, but she will be joined for this new run by Stephen Ray. Blake Walton directs and plays the Narrator who comes in and out of the production. Tanner also wrote an original score.

Ray plays a poet and Tanner portrays a painter who meet in a pool of water. Their identities as H and O are inspired, in part, by Hamlet and Ophelia.

“One of my favorite things about the play is that if you’ve never seen Shakespeare, it’s a perfect first Shakespeare. It’s one hour and everyone can tune into the story. I’ve had children as young as 5 and people in their 90s all enjoying it.”

‘Shakespeare’s Lovers’

By William Shakespeare and Katherine Michelle Tanner. Directed by Blake Walton. Presented by Tree Fort Productions Projects, Dec. 1-17. 3501 S. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. Tickets are $40. 941-544-2276; treeforproductionsprojects.com

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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Tree Fort Productions shares a romantic tale in ‘Shakespeare’s Lovers’