Taming of the Shrew

This summer LA’s sex-positive theatre company, The Illyrian Players, bring the heat to Shakespeare’s controversial comedy The Taming of the Shrew. In a stylized 1950’s world, the Illyrians explore this classic “battle of the sexes” as a BDSM love story, conceptualized and directed by IP Artistic Director and Founder, Carly D. Weckstein.

“This story is, at surface value, very troubling from a modern feminist perspective: a fiery woman, called a bitch because she speaks her mind, is tamed by her new husband into obedient submission to his will. However, I believe that a deeper story, a real love story, exists within this text,” says Weckstein. “We are telling the story of a woman who puts up walls of rage, and what happens when she connects with someone whose strong will, personal experience with anger, and kinky sexuality help her to tear down what she is hiding behind. He gives her permission to love herself. And she gives him the world.”