The Taming of the Shrew

“I see a woman may be made a fool 
If she had not a spirit to resist” 

But what happens when a man makes it his mission to break–or tame–that spirit? Katherine Minola lives in a world controlled by men. Married off by a father desperate to preserve his family’s reputation and open his younger, sweeter daughter Bianca up to the possibility of marriage, Kate finds herself subject to the will of a husband bent on taming her by any means. And tame her Petruchio does, beating, starving, gaslighting, and mocking Kate until she obeys his every whim. Our production will explore the tragedy of Shakespeare’s famous battle of the sexes, asking how and if a woman can be expected to live in an environment as suffocating as Kate’s.