Shakespeare is better with
Jeffrey Carpenter
Jeffrey Carpenter is a born Shakespearian. The text and its myriad meanings comes easily to this Swissvale native, and probably always did.
Boos relates. She played Portia in The Merchant of Venice at age 18 and trembled with the power of “…how all the other passions fleet to air… oh love, be moderate…”. If it speaks to you, a lifetime is not enough time to listen.
Antony and Cleopatra, their first together in 1997, offered a canvas for all the bravura of their youth. Wild Peruvian director Jorge Guerra harnessed the dirt of the Industrial Arts Co-op space (now the Brew House) and the raw talent of actors and metal artists alike. Carpenter’s Pompeii rode in on the back of a pickup truck!
It was a prefiguring. In the very next Quantum Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice directed by Bulgarian Mladen Kiselov, there was a motorcycle entrance by Joe Manganiello as bad boy Lorenzo; Carpenter was Gratiano, a friend of ‘he who must choose the right casket’, Bassiano.
Carpenter was a memorable Bottom in Midsummer staged in the grove of nine crabapple trees still on the grounds of the Frick Pittsburgh. He was a heartbreaking King Lear – too young, but such is his ability; and as director, he gave Quantum a gorgeous, riveting Hamlet.
Alongside Quantum’s evolution has been that of Carpenter’s company with co-director Tami Dixon, Bricolage. Boos cherishes this fellow mid-sized theater sharing the space where innovation and experience co-habit and where the art comes first. If you haven’t been to Bricolage, home of Midnight Radio but so much more, like the recent trio of plays by Vaclav Havel, you must go.
