Regarding the upcoming Andronicus table-read:
Some have asked if I plan to set the play in historically Roman times. Well, as there is little historical basis for the play’s setting, I’ve decided not to. Rather, I’ve created a scenario in which the female-centrality of the casting process becomes apparent and fitting. And thus…
The World of the Play
A virus kills nearly half of the world’s population, indiscriminate of race and age, but ultimately wiping out eighty percent of the male populace. As female victims fall soon after contagion, male nationalists rise to power across the globe. Conflict embroils the world, becoming brutally tribal. Modern weaponry quickly destroys the power and communication infrastructures, plunging humanity literally into a new Dark Age within months. The virus later takes its toll on the male populace; its victims become symptomatic and succumb after a year of incubation.
Time passes and modern weaponry runs out, giving way to older, more brutal warfare. Tribes with the strongest warrior women and most procreative men expand into city-states. In a reborn Roman Empire, the aging male Emperor dies, leaving a power vacuum. The Emperor’s two sons vie for rule, as the Senate votes to place the mantle of power onto the shoulders of Rome’s greatest general. Newly victorious after a decade-long war with the Goths, she returns both with war’s spoils–including the enemy’s queen and her three children–and evidence of its destruction–the remains of four more of her own warrior children.
And thus the play opens…