Henry 6

A Note from Chelsey

This was my first Shakespeare piece, and my first time as lead choreographer on any show — and it scared the hell out of me. 

Barry Edelstien is known as THE Shakespeare person, and I genuinely have no idea why he hired me. We are wildly different people and now have a great friendship. The production ran all summer at The Old Globe— one week Part One, one week Part Two, and on some weekends you could catch both in the same 48 hours. Barry didn't know he needed movement in Shakespeare until I came along. Now he can't work without it-- it was the beginning to a wonderfully collaborative relationship.

Working with straight actors who aren't movers is actually one of my favorite things — they make really interesting, pedestrian movement that you can't manufacture. Shakespeare gives you so much imagery to fill in with shapes of the body. And the production had an absurd amount of money behind it — a grant from a monk, Roy Cockrum who won the Powerball and whose whole thesis was spreading theater to nonprofit institutions. It was a show that will probably never go anywhere, but it was extraordinary.

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