Taffety Punk at the Kennedy Center

Those crazy punkety rockers are at it again. Their next production will be at the Kennedy Center over Labor Day weekend. Please go see it if you get the chance. (It's free!) They also got a nice write-up in the Washington Post, AGAIN! You'll want to get to know them now so someday you can say, "I knew them when they were just starting out."

"The Phoenix and Turtle"

by William Shakespeare

Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage

September 3rd, 6 pm—Free

Company members Marcus Kyd and Erin Mitchell rock one of Shakespeare's lesser known poems with live music and dance. Join us for the punk resurrection of a requiem. Guest artists include musicians Katy Otto, Erin McCarley, & choreographer Jeffrey Bailey.

From today's Washington Post by Jane Horwitz:

[Kennedy Center staffer Gregg] Henry says it's not difficult to discern which companies to invite: "It has to do with what the buzz is in town and what the theater community is talking about." It was Taffety Punk Theatre's well-reviewed May production of "Let X" by Gwydion Suilebhan that blipped on his radar this year. Actor Marcus Kyd, a founder of Taffety Punk, is a self-described "aging punk rocker," as well as a cast member of "Shear Madness" and a graduate of the Shakespeare Theatre's Academy for Classical Acting. He and the Taffety Punkers want to lend the passion of punk to Shakespeare. They'll perform "The Phoenix and Turtle," an allegorical ode to love and constancy, with dance and live music, the text mostly sung. (The name Taffety Punk derives from a phrase in "All's Well That Ends Well." It means, according to Kyd, a kind of well-dressed prostitute.)

"There was a wonderful energy that I've found in the rock-and-roll scene that I don't see in the theater," notes Kyd. "There was such a camaraderie among artists and the people that went to see the artists in the punk scene that I miss."