ABSTRACT
In 2007, the Oxford Middleton included The Bloody Banquet as a collaboration between Middleton and Dekker. Published in 1639, the play's short, problematic text had until then earned only a handful of critical examinations, and had failed to develop any substantial theatrical record. In 2015, however, Brave Spirits Theatre mounted The Bloody Banquet as part of the Capital Fringe Festival in Washington, D.C. As perhaps the only professional production of the play in four centuries, this staging provided a unique opportunity to rehearse and perform a Middletonian play-text with a limited editorial legacy and virtually no performance history. Through a practice-based examination, this chapter explores this production of The Bloody Banquet for a contemporary audience in an intimate black box space. The production's co-director (Smith) and its dramaturg (Kimball) draw from their experiences in the rehearsal room to examine how production artists grappled with the play's various textual ambiguities, staging challenges, and bloody displays. It also considers audience and critical responses to the production, including how it surprised, delighted, and shocked spectators with its extreme violence. Rather than dismiss Middleton and Dekker's text for its relative obscurity, this chapter demonstrates that The Bloody Banquet, though textually challenging, offers a viable and crowd-pleasing play for performance.
