North Fulton Drama Club: Sharing A Passion for Shakespeare

Thomas Strickland, his wife Nicki and their close friend Alyssa Jackson are on a mission.

Their goal?  To bring Shakespeare to the masses.

“We want to make Shakespeare accessible to everyone, both audience and actors, without sacrificing the integrity of the script,” Strickland says.

With this goal in mind, the trio formed the North Fulton Drama Club late in 2005. Over the past five years, the nonprofit company has staged 10 productions of Shakespearean theater right on the lawn of Roswell’s historic Barrington Hall.

Their latest production, The Taming of the Shrew, is one of Shakespeare’s most popular romantic comedies featuring the barb-tongued Katherine and Petruchio, the man sworn to tame her. 

One of NFDC’s strengths is adapting Shakespeare to modern settings. 

“Using modern-day settings helps people identify with the characters more. So we will place Shakespeare's comedies and tragedies in settings that people might find familiar. Macbeth in the 1930s, in Louisiana with blues and voodoo. Romeo & Juliet in the New Wave '80s. A Midsummer's Night's Dream in a glam-rock 1970s setting with glitter and platform shoes.”

Since The Taming of the Shrew features a woman determined to be master of her own fate, it seems fitting that director Zip Rampy has staged the piece in 1968, around the height of the Women’s Liberation Movement.

“This production is different,” Strickland states, “as I've stepped aside to allow Zip Rampy to direct. Mr Rampy has been very active in Calhoun theater and in college theater before that. He's been in several NFDC shows as well.”

Rampy also won the 2010 Metropolitan Atlanta Theater Award (MAT) for lead actor.

“I’ve known Zip for years,” Strickland continues, “So when he mentioned that he had an idea about how he'd like to approach Shrew, it was an easy decision to let him have a go.”

NFDC’s production of The Taming of the Shrew stars a talented cast that includes Emily Gail Howell, a newcomer to local Roswell theater, as Katherine, and Paul McClain, a familiar face in the local community and veteran actor, as Petrucchio.

“We are so grateful to Barrington Hall’s caretaker, Robert Winebarger, and to Morgan Timmis, Roswell’s Historic and Cultural Affairs Manager for supporting us in doing what we love to do.  All of us work full-time and none of us or the actors are paid to do this.  We strongly believe in sharing Shakespeare with our community.

“All of the things that make humans fascinating can be found in his 37 plays. All of our glories and all of our faults. We joke and say that we choose Shakespeare because licensing is never a problem, as his works are all in the public domain (which is true) … but really, you can't find another playwright whose work is so flexible and malleable, that still speaks to us about who we are.”

North Fulton Drama Club’s production of The Taming of the Shrew runs Friday and Saturday evenings, May 6 through May 21. There will also be a special matinee performance on May 15 at 4 p.m. Visit the company’s website at Northfultondramaclub.org for more information. Performances are free.