WRITTEN BY ZACHARY BONES
DIRECTED BY CARLY DW BONES
The Aaron Play picks up right where Shakespeare’s bloodiest tragedy, Titus Andronicus, leaves off: with its self-proclaimed villain, Aaron the Moor, buried up to his chest in earth, sentenced to death by starvation. Watched by two Roman guards and visited by spirits of the wronged dead, Aaron plots to escape and reunite with his son. Tragic, darkly funny, and terrifyingly relevant, this fresh riff on Shakespeare’s bloodiest play explores justice vs. vengeance, cycles of violence, and the cost of building an empire.
Indie Shakes Artistic Director, Melissa Chalsma comments, “Our Studio space is a place of experimentation and innovation, where we throw our resources into pushing the story of theater forward. The Aaron Play is a bold new work that interweaves Shakespeare’s story with completely modern sensibilities and theatrical conventions. We first presented it as a reading in our iambic lab series earlier this year. To co-produce the world premiere with Coin & Ghost is the perfect representation of what I love about our indoor space: collaborate with fascinating artists, support a new work through the development process, and present our audience with a play that re-evaluates Shakespeare and challenges assumptions, all while remaining rooted in our fundamental value of surfacing our shared humanity.”
Coin & Ghost Artistic Director Zach Davidson adds, “At C&G, we remix mythologies — sometimes to seek a fresh entry point into old material, sometimes because we find a juicy ‘what if,’ and sometimes as a way to interrogate who or what has been excluded from past narratives. The Aaron Play checks all these boxes and then some. It’s timely, wicked, and way funnier than it has any right to be, and co-producing it with Indie Shakes is an absolute dream. Beyond the fact that it was Indie Shake’s 2018 production of Titus Andronicus that inspired Mr. Bones’ script…when you look across Los Angeles for theatres radical in their approach to accessibility, inclusivity, and classic stories for contemporary audiences, Indie Shakes is in a league of their own. We could not imagine a better home for the world premiere of The Aaron Play!”
Playwright Zachary Bones comments, “After seeing the Indie Shakes production of Titus Andronicus, I started thinking a lot about Aaron as a character and a villain: ‘what else is going on there, what’s his origin story?’ That curiosity was the first spark. The other inspiration came from my work as a visual artist. I often wonder what’s just outside the frame of a painting, like Botticelli’s Birth of Venus — what came before, what happens after? In Titus Andronicus, Aaron doesn’t die onstage; he’s sentenced to execution but presumably lives longer. For a villain whose greatest weapon is manipulation, that gap felt too big to ignore. I began to wonder: what else happens to Aaron after Titus Andronicus? That was the seed for this play.”
Director Carly DW Bones adds, “It’s absolutely thrilling, so exciting, and such an honor that these two theater companies we love want to uplift this story and work with us. They’ve given us so much trust and artistic license to see our vision through, to hold the work the way we want to, which is central to our artistic and personal ethos: humanity first. No art should sacrifice people’s humanity, dignity, or sense of worth; otherwise, why are we even doing it? If the process is antithetical to the message of the play, it breaks the spell. This process feeds into the spell. You can feel the care for the cast of actors – it’s the special sauce and you can feel it on stage.”
