Nashville Theater Company Preps ‘Terminator the Second’ for Stage

Let me preface this post by saying that my current roommate is absolutely obsessed with James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day. I’ve heard every set rumor and cinematic interpretation of the film that you can imagine, yet even I am surprised that nobody ever thought to draw a correlation between the Terminator and…wait for it…Shakespeare (oh, of course).

Based out of Nashville, Tennessee the Husky Jack Theater company is the guilty party here; now tasked with adapting Shakespearean dialogue to somehow include massive machine guns and bloodthirsty robots. Surprisingly enough, the company really wanted to stay true to Shakespeare’s original dialogues, intentionally holding themselves to strict rules and nerdy guidelines.

Each line and phrase is taken directly from folios printed by or before 1685, and many extended sections of dialogue are composed of individual lines from separate works. Only proper nouns and pronouns were subject to change, as dictated by the plot. In these instances, all proper nouns are supplanted only by other proper nouns, and all pronouns by other pronouns. In some cases, corresponding verb tenses are modified. [HuskyJackal]

Well that’s all nice and dandy, but why the hell choose Terminator 2 as your content?!

First of all, it’s just an awesome movie. And you’d be amazed by how perfectly the themes so pervasive in Shakespeare’s plays lend themselves to the story of the Terminator: horrific prophecies, charges of madness, the terror of an implacable enemy, the fierceness of a mother’s love for her son.

In our reworking, we were continually struck by extended passages from Shakespeare that seemed as though they could have been written specifically with these late 20th century characters in mind.

At the moment, the company is trying to raise funds for the production, with about a third of their funding already donated on a May 1st deadline. To donate, you can click right here and offer a helping buck or two. For the hesitant few not convinced that this will be the greatest thing they’ve never seen, check after the jump for a promotional video and script sample from Terminator the Second.

[via blastr]

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