Duel Reality, The 7 Fingers at Shakespeare Theatre Company

It's a tale as old as time. Two households, both alike in dignity but almost always arrayed in either blue or red, simply can't help themselves and must forever bend themselves to the others' destruction until, what's that, is that a pair of star-cross'd lovers taking the scene? It's a story so familiar that many have decided they know it already--two silly teenagers (have they never noticed how blisteringly perceptive Juliet is?) meet, fall for each other so quickly and so absurdly (have they never met... a young person?) that they manage to first kill half of each others' nearest and dearest (because the toxic pressures of seemingly inescapable socioeconomic and patriarchal structures were only invented with the terminology that named them) before killing themselves (because... well, read the above). It's easy in the world today to be a cynic. It's harder to let yourself feel the untamed emotions in the journey of the story.

Cast of Duel Reality, photo by Emmanuel Burriel.

The 7 Fingers, an arts collective out of Montréal, challenges the cynicism by taking on the big beats of Romeo and Juliet through a dazzling and varied array of circus skills, in an adaptation by writer, direcotr and choreographer Shana Carroll. It's hard to feel jaded when your heart is in your mouth because did you just SEE that? I have rarely felt the anxiety in carefully choreographed stage violence that watching two massively skilled artists hurling themselves down the Chinese pole and stopping only millimeters short of disaster incited.

It's when the focus is on the inherent drama of the performers' skills that Duel Reality works best; the themes of conflict, joy, love, and violence all lend themselves to the stage in any permutation or medium.  The occasional appearance of text from Romeo and Juliet felt unnecessary to the story as the performers were already presenting it, and took away from the performers' strongest suits onstage and the bold choices already being made in their adaptation. 

Duel Reality doesn't have to be Shakespeare. There's no need! We have Shakespeare and it's doing just fine. What Duel Reality can do that the rest of a typical DC theatre season can't is give us new things to see and gasp for and celebrate under the big tent of what theatre can be.