The Taming of the Shrew,at its normal venue

In February, when I checked with Garfield Shakespeare Company founder and director Joe Cook about finding a dress rehearsal time when I could grab pictures of the troupe's spring 2012 performance of The Taming of the Shrew, he told me about two interesting twists to this year's show.

One twist would be that the company would open the show with two performances March 2-3 at a newly opened venue, the Sanctuary on Penn, a converted church at 701 N. Pennsylvania St., in downtown Indianapolis, before returning to its usual spring show venue, the Garfield Park Arts Center, for two more weekends of shows. The Sanctuary's owners, Scott and Berriebarbara Wheeler, had a daughter, Tempiellen Knutsen, who was a cast member in the play (she was playing younger daughter Bianca), and had welcomed the troupe to use the facility, which was still under renovation. Actually, Tempie had made her GSC debut last fall playing Ophelia in the company's production of "The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark."

The other twist was that Knutsen, because of a conflict with a school activity the weekend of March 16-18, could not perform in that weekend of plays at the Arts Center. So a second "Bianca," Elysia Rohn, a college student but GSC veteran, would study and step into the role for that weekend's shows. Cook asked if I could grab shots of the show that would include both "Biancas."

In a post on March 5, you saw my pictures from the Knutsen/Bianca performance at the Sanctuary. Today's post is more pictures of Shrew, but this time at the much better-lighted Garfield Park Arts Center. The lighting alone motivated me to take more pictures I had planned when I dropped in on the Sunday matinee performance, which was the last.

That's Elysia in the lead photo at the top and seated, immediately below, in a scene with her Shrew sister Katharina, played by Susan Yeaw.

You can find a full gallery of shots from the Garfield Park Arts Center performance of The Taming of the Shrew at my online galleries at SmugMug.com.

Garfield Shakespeare Company opens The Taming of the Shrew

The Garfield Shakespeare Company added a twist to its spring production, "The Taming of the Shrew," last weekend by opening with two shows away from its normal venue in Indianapolis. "Shrew" debuted for shows Friday and Saturday at the Sanctuary on Penn, a former church undergoing renovation for use as an all-events hosting facility.

The facility at 701 N. Pennsylvania St. has hosted some small  music performances and at least one wedding since last fall, but I'm not sure how it pulled off the latter. It's clearly needing extensive work still. But, for the purposes of hosting a small theater production, when the lights are relatively low and all eyes are on center stage, I could see how that and perhaps similar activities could work there in the short term.

The dress rehearsal shoot was difficult; the stage lighting to be used for opening night was not set up yet, so they used regular room lighting, a terribly low tungsten variety. With the consent and encouragement of the play's director, Joe Cook, who was sympathetic about the inferior lighting situation, I started the shoot using flash (which you'll see at the gallery) but felt early on that the strobe was distracting the actors; I noticed several of them were starting to squint or even close their eyes before I pulled off shots. So I turned off the flash and shot available light the rest of the way, pushing ISO settings to the 4000 to 5000 range on my Canon 7D.

I abandoned my f/2.8 lenses and experimented with my Sigma 85mm f/1.4 and Canon "nifty-fifty," the 50mm f/1.8. The 85mm prime turned out to be too much reach, factoring in the 1.6 multiplier on the 7D; I shot the majority of the images with the 50mm, which enabled me to get close when I needed to. Unfortunately, using such wide apertures -- usually wide open or 2.2 -- left me little margin for error with the depth of field, and my body of work shows it: lots of missed or soft-focus shots. Compounding things was that there also were lots of closed eyes, especially in shots involving one of the lead actors (and I don't think these were blinks -- far too many of them to write off as blinks). So either this actor was struggling to recall lines, or worried I'd blast him with the flash. So I felt terrible about that, and because even when I shut off the flash, I had to do my "zooming" with my feet, so I still felt I was a distraction to the performers.

GPS will return "Shrew" to its spring home -- the Garfield Park Arts Center in Garfield Park -- for five total shows over the next two weekends, 7 p.m. March 9 & 10 and 16 & 17 and a special 2 p.m. matinee on March 18. The company's 2012 season will conclude in September with "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the MacAllister Center for the Performing Arts, also in Garfield Park.

These images were taken at a dress rehearsal at the Sanctuary on Penn on Thursday, the night before opening night. A full gallery of images from this shoot are available at my online site at SmugMug.com.