University Players to perform a business adaptation of Julius Caesar

After many late nights of rehearsals and hours spent memorizing lines in iambic pentameter, 13 actors in tailored business suits are ready to take the stage ... if you can call it a stage.

University Players, IU’s student-run theatre organization, will open its 2010-11 season with “Julius Caesar: A Corporate Tragedy,” by senior Robert Casey Ellis, an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play “Julius Caesar.”

Inspired by Orson Welles’ 1937 adaptation of “Julius Caesar” as a comment on fascist Italy, Ellis, a telecommunications and theatre major, said  anytime there is an abuse of power over people, the themes of the play are relevant.

Taking a look at the influence and control of today’s major corporations, Ellis found Julius Caesar as a medium to express current sentiments toward the business world.

“The play is a comment on the corporate bailouts,” Ellis said. “It’s taking a look at corruption, ambivalence and betrayal to examine the powers of Wall Street.”

In this production, the character Brutus deals with conflicts of loyalty, reputation and pride, and the play centers around a plot to take down Caesar, whom Brutus, among others, believes is trying to unethically save his corporation with a bailout from the Senate.

Unlike most theatrical productions at IU, the play will be performed in a lecture hall in the Kelley School of Business.

Freshman Chelsey Sorbo, the stage manager, said with limited spaces for performance on campus, room 219 has been an interesting space to stage a show.

“The play already has a business feel to it,” Sorbo said of Ellis’ adaptation. “Performing in the business school makes it kind of special.”

Sorbo, who became involved with University Players at the beginning of the school year, was asked to take on the role of stage manager.

“The University Players does a really good job of giving people opportunities to do things that they normally wouldn’t have the chance to do,” Sorbo said.

A chance to see Shakespeare in a new and accessible light is exactly what Ellis desires for the audience of his production.

“Shakespeare wrote these plays for the common man,” Ellis said. “The plays were not intended to be just for academia but to express contemporary, relevant and universal ideas so that everyone could take away something.”

While the play will be in contemporary fashion with the setting and costumes, actors will be performing the direct lines from Shakespeare’s original play.

“I want people to see these immortal words and that they still hold weight today,” Ellis said.

While Ellis’ adaptation offers a corporate commentary through the production, he finds that a Shakespeare play is malleable to whatever relevant issues are at hand.

“If people take something away, that will be great,” Ellis said. “But our primary purpose is to entertain.”