The Brawl Crawl!

Occupy Verona's long cold-weather hiatus has finally come to an end!

That's right, friends! It is warming up in New York City, and so Occupy Verona's site-specific outdoor Shakespeare performances can begin again!

Before we jump back into a full production, however, some of the Occupy Verona crowd (including myself) embarked on a little experiment called, "The Brawl Crawl."

The concept was simple: Perform Shakespeare fight scenes IN bars all over the city, traveling from bar to bar for each scene. 

We had a solid line-up of scenes and a handful of bars in the West Village that agreed to house us as long as "everyone buys a beer."

We started with the opening brawl from Romeo and Juliet (Do you bite your thumb at us sir?) to a decent-sized audience. 

By the time we got to the second bar for my scene (The Taming of the Shrew with Marc Sauve) there were enough people for me to be worried that I might accidentally kick someone while doing my fight choreography.

Five bars and six scenes later, there were almost 80 people there, drinking beers and cheering on the scenes! 

Rest assured, the Brawl Crawl will happen again, and I will most likely be reprising my role as Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew! 

#OccupyVerona

Take the most iconic Shakespeare play in history, and now stage it flash-mob style on the streets of New York City.

This is the second year of Occupy Verona and I am proud to say that I'm playing Lady Capulet in this production!

We have had two performances so far and there are many more on the horizon, all over Manhattan and Brooklyn! Our schedule is up at occupyverona.com

There has already been some serious buzz! Our first performance was in Union Square, and it was absolutely packed with people, including a group of hare krishna playing VERY loud music all throughout Acts one through five, two hecklers clearly drinking whiskey out of Starbucks cups, a homeless guy in Oscar the Grouch pants who lectured our director on how the Montagues and the Capulet should wear different colors because "it's really about race relations," and... oh yeah... best-selling author Christopher Moore.

#OccupyVerona performing Romeo & Juliet at Union Square West 2nite. What a great surprise! pic.twitter.com/ExdqnOpYuM
— Christopher Moore (@TheAuthorGuy) September 19, 2013

Booyah.

Before the show started we got a pep talk from fearless director Joe Raik, which included What To Do if the Cops Stop Us. Thankfully, there was no police intervention. In fact, it seemed like the cops couldn't care less. Win. Although it would be pretty badass to have an arrest on record for performing Romeo and Juliet without a permit. I'm just saying.

Here are some of the other tweets from total strangers from out first performance:

A troupe performing act 5 of "Romeo and Juliet" in the middle of union square. Neato. #occupyverona pic.twitter.com/OkAqX5GA2M
— Eddie Dougrou (@Eddie_Doug) September 19, 2013

Just saw Romeo and Juliet live in #unionsquare! All we can say is: WOW!!! #occupyverona
— The Lovelies (@thelovelies) September 19, 2013

In conclusion, it's awesome. Come.