Shakespeare’s Rugby Wars
Chris Coculuzzi, Matt Toner, and William Shakespeare
2001 Toronto Fringe Festival
July 5th – 15th, 2001
Robert St. Playing Field
Spadina/Bloor West (behind Dominion)
“Sweet Duke of York, our Prop to lean upon,
Now thou art gone, we have no Staff, no Stay!”
About the Play
It is the mid-15th Century in England and the Royal Houses are bitterly divided. King Henry VI and the House of Lancaster hold the Crown but crime is up, French conquests are down, and the courtiers are living the high life. The House of York, fed up with Lancaster’s mismanagement, try to wrestle power away from Henry in a bid to restore good government to England, but not even an Act of Parliament can settle their regal dispute. Then, finally: a sign from God – an elliptical Sun! – and both Houses know there is only one sane way to settle their conflict…in a game of Rugby!
Upstart Crow Sports Network (UCSN) proudly brings you Shakespeare’s Rugby Wars, a clever hybrid of improvised sporting play and spectacle theatre transforming Shakespeare’s Wars of the Roses tetralogy (Henry VI, Parts 1, 2, and 3 and Richard III) into a live rugby match. Chris Marlowe and Jack Falstaff provide all the play-by-play colour commentary with interviews and updates from that on-the-pitch historian/reporter Raphael Holinshed, as Team Lancaster and Team York scrum it out for the British Crown and Rugby Supremacy!
Upstart Crow Theatre Group 