How King John Would Have Preferred to Die, If He Hadn't Been Poisoned by the Crown

The Rude Mechs Fix King John

Authors

Kathryn Rebecca Van Winkle University of Texas at Austin

Abstract

Upon announcing the 2013 premiere of Fixing King John at The Off Center, playwright Kirk Lynn and his Austin, Texas theatre company, the Rude Mechs, pledged to make "Shakespeare's least produced works 'useful' again" (Rude Mechs 2013). Now rarely staged, King John was once regarded as far more "useful." The conflict between authenticity and the impulse to "fix" King John through adaptation is central to its production history. In Fixing King John, Lynn adapts the original's language structure, gender representation, and language; while in production, the company transformed the relationship of the performers to their characters and the text through improvisation and autobiographical comment. While appropriating the discourse of "authenticity," the Rude Mechs made King John "useful again" for their contemporary Austin spectators.

Author Biography

Kathryn Rebecca Van Winkle, University of Texas at Austin

Kathryn Rebecca Van Winkle is a theater scholar and artist based in Austin, Texas. She received her Ph.D. in Performance as Public Practice from The University of Texas at Austin in 2019, and is now a part-time Assistant Professor of Theatre at Southwestern University, a Lecturer at The University of Texas at Austin, and an Associate Adjunct Professor at Austin Community College. She has published work on Marlowe and ethopoeia in Theatre Symposium and on contemporary Irish theatre in New Hibernia Review, and she recently hosted a Make Every Media podcast on The Off Center. This former home of the Rude Mechs is one of an increasing number of disappearing arts spaces in Austin.