71 The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare adapted by Mike Dailey and Nic Dimond dir Nic Dimond for Strawdog Theatre. This was a big show for me, personally and professionally. I played Marcus Brutus and not only was it my biggest role, I think ever, at this point, I made friends that I still have to this day. A Julius Caesar in modern dress, we were called “Smartly reduced in scale and smart, period. It's the first good Julius Caesar I've seen,” by Michael Phillips in the Chicago Tribune. This was also the show that made Strawdog get AC. It was 95 degrees on September 5th, the day we opened. Just a sea of programs waving in the darkness, and every spare AC unit we could find in any available window, and one in the door to backstage. And BLOODY. For the assassination scene, all of the consiprators had blood packs taped to our wrists and hands. And John Henry Roberts as Caesar had two turkey basters filled with blood in his pockets AND a whoopee cushion filled with blood strapped to his stomach, so that when he would day and lay on his front, the pressure caused blood to slowly leak out during the scene. And since the funeral happened AFTER intermission, (which we used to clean the blood off the stage) Caesar and the Conspirators essentially had too stand in a corner until the end of intermission. For those of us who smoked at the time, someone would put cigarettes in our mouth and light them for us. Strawdog also had those low ceilings, so for years you could tell where Caesar was standing by THE FAKE BLOOD SPLATTERED ALL OVER THE CEILING. #retrospective #2002 #juliuscaesar #strawdog #brutus #nicdimond #bloodwhoopeecushion (at Chicago, Illinois) https://www.instagram.com/p/B6lGmx8po_4/?igshid=rau6yu319b2i
