Free Reign Theatre’s latest take on a classic turns King Lear into a Viking queen
When Charles Holmes decided to start a theater company, he surrounded himself with people he’d fought with for years.
Not quarreled with. Stabbed, speared, impaled and otherwise abused in every way a pointed object could do scary-looking stage mayhem. Out of this veteran fight director’s vision came Free Reign Theatre Company, which has brought “Lear” to Duke Energy Theater this week.
Shakespeare’s “King Lear” loses half its title in this version because Lear is a Viking queen in England, where she makes enemies of two daughters and casts the faithful third one aside. (There’s a precedent: Glenda Jackson played the role in a Broadway revival this year.)
Unusual choices seem natural at Free Reign, where Holmes and his cohorts have created a rare thing in the theatrical world: a democracy. The company’s name conveys freedom to explore, with an extra “g” added as a nod to Queen Charlotte, and so they do.
“We have meetings about all important issues,” says Holmes, the CEO and technical director. “When you’re passionate about something and don’t get heard, you end up with hurt feelings.”
“We’re a young company, and everyone has different strengths,” says marketing and communications director Katie Bearden. “Charles has done a great job of finding a board of advisors where everybody really works and shares a vision.”
Battles and brawls
Two things have remained constant across Free Reign’s first 14 months: It has performed classics in the public domain, a boon to a company with a small budget, and each show has involved stage combat.
Free Reign debuted last October with “They Fight,” a compilation piece described as “the best battles, brawls and blade-brandishing in the works of Shakespeare.” George Bernard Shaw’s “Saint Joan” followed in August.
Now comes “Lear,” with director Heather Bucsh moving the setting up to the 10th-century. She made not only the monarch but also Kent and the Fool female, after research told her Vikings readily accepted women as leaders. Lear’s cruel wish for Goneril – that she become sterile or raise a hideous child who’ll torment her – inspired Bucsh to wonder what would happen if a woman applied that curse to her own daughter.
She cast a real mother and daughter, Lisa and Madeleine Essex, as Lear and Cordelia. When teenaged Maddy read for Lear’s youngest child, she asked in her nervousness if mom could help with the audition; Lisa did, and Bucsh quickly decided to grab both. That kind of spontaneity and flexibility marks Free Reign, which wants to work with actors and directors from across the region. (It’s easiest to follow the company through its Facebook page.)
New endeavors
Holmes seems so charged-up by his new endeavor that it’s hard to believe he spent his first eight years in the Piedmont doing no theater at all. He’d been an actor and fight director in Atlanta, but after marriage and relocation, he left that behind.
“I’d always worked 40 hours a week at a job and 25 hours at rehearsals (and performances), and I thought I would try a normal life,” he recalls. “But I realized part of my life was missing.”
He was playing Laertes and doing fight choreography in 2012 for Shakespeare Carolina’s “Hamlet” when he met Bearden, who was playing Bernardo. The notion of an independent company grew slowly, as Holmes realized “You can present ideas to a company (you’re not running), but then it comes down to what the producers and board want to do.”
He and Bearden found comrades to join them, gained 501(c)(3) nonprofit status for Free Reign and set up a small office in Rock Hill. The drawback to being there, Bearden learned, is that they can apply for educational grants and school tours only in South Carolina.
Company members took a shortened “They Fight” to Andrew Jackson Middle School in Lancaster County; Bearden reports that kids came alive when they saw more to Shakespeare than language they couldn’t easily understand. Holmes also did pro bono work for Garinger High School, making sure fight scenes in “Romeo and Juliet” left all students with the appropriate number of limbs. “I love teaching people how to be safely violent,” he says.
The classics
Corporate gigs have come Free Reign’s way, including a team-building exercise based on “Game of Thrones” for a hotel. But although long years of stage combat has left Holmes with seven concussions and $6,000 worth of weapons – and although Free Reign’s spring project will be a revival of “They Fight” – he envisions a more peaceful future for the company.
“My heart is in the classics: Shakespeare, Moliere. (Bearden, who loves Renaissance drama, backs him there.) I’d like to see us create an original version of ‘The Three Musketeers.’ “ He laughs. “It’s up to the other members of the board to take me out of that obsession!
“As we grow, I could see us doing Tennessee Williams or Arthur Miller. The main thing now is to get Free Reign known around the theater community. The more theater companies support each other, the healthier we’ll all be.”
“Lear”
When: Nov. 14-Nov. 23; 7:30 p.m. Thursday; 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
Where: Duke Energy Theater, Spirit Square, 345 N. College St.
Tickets: $12 in advance, $15 at the door.
Details: 704-372-1000, blumenthalarts.org or freereigntheatre.com.
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