Ice The Beef Presents ROMEO AND JULIET At The International Festival of Arts and Ideas

Student activists from New Haven's Ice the Beef present their own spin of Shakespeare's classic tragedy, Romeo and Juliet, after a year-long residency with the teaching artists of Elm Shakespeare Company. Their debut performance will be on the New Haven Green Saturday, June 26 at 3:30 pm, as part of the International Festival of Arts and Ideas.

The production is a hybrid of Shakespearean performance and interactive social justice theatre that looks to find tactics for ending violence in our modern-day community. It is the culmination of a 10-month artist-in-residence during trying times. Thanks to a New Haven Cultural Vitality grant, Education Director Sarah Bowles started in September working both in-person and online with Chaz Carmon and the student leaders of Ice the Beef to create a special kind of performance.

Ice the Beef is is a student-driven Connecticut nonprofit, dedicated to empowering teens who want to end gun violence. Led by Chaz Carmon, the students are clear about their goals, saying, "We focus on gun violence prevention by teaching youth that their voice and decisions matter! ... We support each other as a family, and we choose to be the change we wish to see in the world... We support [each other's] dreams, goals, and talents by creating a family and giving mentoring support to youth through having meetings, sharing stories, laughing, joking, performing, and standing up for what is right!"

Ice the Beef had worked with Elm Shakespeare in the past, but never on such an ambitious project. This time, they came to Elm with a specific desire to work with Romeo & Juliet because of how it applies to their lives. Many of the performers have a personal connection to violence in their neighborhoods and are sick of it. It is an important issue that they want to highlight, and that is what this performance does.

In addition to telling the traditional tragic story of star-crossed teens fated to die, these students refuse to accept that violence and tragedy are the only possible outcome. Dissatisfied with Shakespeare's vision, they re-imagine the story "Ice the Beef style," interrogating the choices that characters make and looking for a different ending. They then ask the audience what could have been done to prevent the tragedy. Then, they REWIND and act out different scenarios with the audience's suggestions and a few of their own. They hope this opens community discussion about gun violence and provides an opportunity to actually try out real strategies for violence de-escalation and prevention.

As reported by Lucy Gellman of New Haven Arts paper, "The technique is from Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed, which places theater at the crosshairs of lived experience, present-day conflict and restorative justice. For actors, almost all of whom are in high school, the performance comes in a year that has seen a rise in citywide gun violence, including four homicides in under two weeks this May."

In pulling the show into New Haven's present, Carmon and Bowles have also made a series of artistic decisions that honor both Shakespeare and the young people taking on his words. No toy guns appear in the play, given the history of state-sanctioned violence on young Black kids playing with them in public parks."

This work is an example of how Elm Shakespeare Company believes these 400-year-old plays can work today, and belong to everyone. "I truly believe in the transformative power of these plays," says Rebecca Goodheart, Producing Artistic Director. "We are thrilled that this partnership is possible and grateful for the incredible vision and commitment of Ice the Beef, the support of the City of New Haven, and the International Festival of Arts & Ideas invitation to share this work."

As reported by Lucy Gellman in the New Haven Arts Paper, Romeo & Juliet can be seen at 3:30 on June 26 on the New Haven Green and then August 13-15th during Elm Shakespeare's first-ever Youth Shakespeare Festival. Find out more at www.ArtIdea.org.

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