Davis & Elkins College welcomes the Rustic Mechanicals back to campus for their 2025 Vaulting Ambition Tour, showcasing Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, Macbeth. This performance will be held at 7:00 p.m. on Friday, March 14th in Joni & Buck Smith Arts Forum in the Myles Center for the Arts, with a pre-show music jam beginning at 6:30 p.m.
Founded by Celi Oliveto in the summer of 2014, the Mechanicals is the only troupe of actors in the state of West Virginia dedicated to touring the works of William Shakespeare and other classical playwrights. Macbeth showcases the real-life husband and wife and founders of the Rustic Mechanicals as General Macbeth and his passionately persuasive wife, whose vaulting ambition unravels their love and their lives as the power of a prophecy tempts them to accelerate their road to royalty.
Director of Macbeth Jim Warren, ecstatic to bring the magic of a tragedy to life in a unique way, says, “What an awesome challenge we have in carrying the torch (so to speak!) of doing Macbeth using Shakespeare’s staging conditions to gross-out, freak-out, surprise, delight, and scare our audiences without light boards, sound boards, or electric fog machines. We will create a live, acoustic soundtrack: creepy sounds/voices that will help an audience imagine the heath, the castles, and the backdrop for the battles in ways that Shakespeare’s company did for the play’s first audiences… and underneath it all has to be love! If our production is not filled with big love, the story, the tragedy doesn’t work. I am completely bored by and intolerant of theatre, TV, and film where I don’t care about the characters.”
The crew include Director Jim Warren; Voice & Text Coach Bridget Rue Esterhuizen; Fight Choreographer Millie Omps; Dramaturg John S. Shirley; Production Designer Jason A. Young; and Production and Tour Manager Niki DeWitt. The cast include Jason A. Young, Joshua Brooks, Stephen Phillips, Sinead Tobin, Asa Krinov, Aaron Harris, Seret Cole, and Iris Kolenich.
Assistant Professor of Theatre and Film at Davis & Elkins College Lonnie Martin contributes, “It’s always an honor to have the Mechanicals visit Elkins! Shakespeare’s ‘Scottish Play’ is one of my favorites of the bard. Jason, Sarah, and their team are always so inventive, so I’m really excited to see what they do with this one.”
The Mechanicals will be touring Macbeth throughout the spring and fall months for schools and educational purposes, along with a short tour of the historical play Henry V in the summer. The Mechanicals focus on making Shakespeare’s plays accessible to modern audiences by utilizing dynamic and extreme casting techniques paired with Shakespeare’s staging conditions. For more information on booking these touring shows, you can email vtcrusticmechanicals@gmail.com.
All tickets are $15, but faculty, staff, and students from D&E will be admitted free! Tickets can be purchased at the Mechanicals website: our.show/rmmbde. Be sure to follow this event and others that the Mechanicals present by keeping up with their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/RusticMechanicals
