A new twist
Marin Shakes' powerful play reimagines `Caesar'
It's already been a month since the Ides of March, but there's never a bad time to revisit William Shakespeare's tale of Julius Caesar. But the show that Marin Shakespeare Company is doing this weekend gets it “twisted.”
“Julius Caesar Twisted” was first created by incarcerated performers at Vacaville's California State Prison Solano in 2022 with Marin Shakespeare Company company cofounder and managing director Lesley Schisgall Currier, as part of the company's ongoing Shakespeare program in various California prisons.
Now, Marin Shakes is presenting a slightly revised “Julius Caesar Twisted” for audiences at the company's new indoor theater in San Rafael.
“The really cool thing about this project is it just brings together pretty much everything that Marin Shakespeare is,” Currier says. “It brings together arts, education and social justice, and it's allowing us to teach about Shakespeare and incarceration.”
Pharaoh Brooks, one of the people who created the adaptation while incarcerated in Solano, now plays Caesar, and Currier directs.
The cast is about half formerly incarcerated actors from the company's prison programs.
“I put the casting call out to that group first, and I cast everybody who was a returned artist who wanted to be in the show,” Currier says. “And then the other half came from our general auditions.”
Marin Shakespeare Company has been offering weekly Shakespeare drama classes at San Quentin State Prison since 2003. In 2014, they added a similar program at Solano, followed by programs in several other prisons around the state.
Some graduates of the prison programs went on to become artists-in-residence at Marin Shakes upon their release, such as Dameion Brown from Solano. Marin Shakespeare Company also began the Returned Citizens Theatre Troupe for continuing theatrical projects of the formerly incarcerated.
Brooks started taking the Shakespeare courses as soon as they were offered at Solano in 2014.
“When I got to Solano, anything I saw on the board I was going to sign up for,” Brooks says. “I write, so I said, oh, Shakespeare! I guess that could be somebody cool to learn from. I was not even getting in the group to act.”
His first acting role, there or anywhere, was Julius Caesar in the play of the same name.
“I'm in a place where it may be unsafe to be myself,” Brooks recalls. “I can put down my mask and pick up a lot of other masks, more playful masks, and put them on.”
It was in part because of that early experience that Brooks suggested that they do an adaptation this time around instead of doing the play again.
“There's four levels in California state prisons,” Currier says. “Solano prison is both level three and level two. So, we had a program on level three and a program on level two. Pharaoh was on level three when I first met him, and I was really happy when he came into our group on level two a few years later. I was even happier when he told me that he'd been found suitable for parole.”
“Julius Caesar Twisted” in 2022 was the first play that