\u201cIt is an intriguing story and, had the murder happened\ntoday, it would have gotten a one-day play in the news cycle and that would\nhave been it,\u201d says Calderon. \u201cPlus, it would have had all the modern, forensic\ninvestigative tools to be able to have solved this mystery. Of course, with\nsomething that happened in 1892, it was all argumentative in how they approached\nthe case. The mystery endures, the American folklore endures. Had it happened\ntoday, it would have been case open, case closed, and we would have moved on\nmuch quicker.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the world has not yet moved on from Lizzie Borden.\nQuestions swirling around the case still fuel speculation, and these questions\nare tackled right up on the stage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although Calderon is a Theatre Aurora veteran, having sat\nin the directors\u2019 chair numerous times, this is his first time directing what\ncould be considered a thriller. As a director, his first question was how to\nexplore that genre on stage while still keeping the spirit of what is, at its\ncore, a period piece requiring a contemporary approach. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s a play that stands the test of time, he says, with a\ntimeless psychological element, asking the audience to question what actually\ndrives a person to commit a murder \u2013 or two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf you take a\nlook at any kind of case that they would label as a crime of passion, something\nthat isn\u2019t necessarily premeditated but happens in the moment, what takes a\nperson to that brink? We\u2019re talking about a period where they don\u2019t have some\nof the influences that we would have today, like technology, that would\npressure or really dictate this sort of psychological fragility that Lizzie\nBorden may have had: financial issues, problems with families and relationship\nissues, there\u2019s even some question of sexuality and things that pressure us or\nforce us to have stress in our every day lives \u2013 at what point does each person\nhave a break?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe way the play presents itself is, if you were to be\nput in the same position, what would you do? There is a dramatic device within\nBlood Relations that the playwright uses for the retelling of the Lizzie Borden\nstory, which is a play-within-a-play. An actor friend of Lizzie Borden decides\nto take on her role and Lizzie herself sets up all the situations and\ncircumstances. But it is up to the actors to decide that she\u2019s reached that\nbreaking point and, when she does, what is her decision in terms of being able\nto actually commit those murders?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With Hallowe\u2019en just around the corner, a play about a\ncold case is a fitting way to kick off Theatre Aurora\u2019s latest season. The\nFurious Five is a collection of, as the name suggests, five plays and musicals,\nmostly skewed to the darker side of things, with a splash of comedy thrown in\nfor balance, themed around \u201crevenge and passionate lashing out.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Additional productions lined up for the 2019-2020 season\ninclude the Stephen Sondheim musical Assassins (November 28 \u2013 December 7), in\nwhich Calderon returns to his acting roots playing Lincoln assassin John Wilkes\nBooth, Christopher Hampton\u2019s Les Liaisons Dangereuses (January 23 \u2013 February\n1), Shakespeare\u2019s The Tempest (March 5 \u2013 March 14), and rounded out by Joseph\nKesselring\u2019s comedy classic Arsenic & Old Lace (April 23 \u2013 May 2).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThematically, we thought this was the one play to open up the season because it sort of calls into question \u2013 it is not a black and white full-revenge or crime of passion, or a visceral response to something. It is a bit more mysterious and up in the air,\u201d says Calderon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By Brock Weir <\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n In the age of the 24-hour news cycle, along with the proliferation of social media, how would the story of Lizzie Borden play out today? Acquitted of the bloody axe murders of her father and stepmother in 1892, the now-legendary case remains unsolved, spurring countless theories about what actually took place that day in that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":25061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/2019-10-24-02.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6wr","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-22 16:20:16","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Facebook\"](\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers-online.com%2Fauroran%2Fwp-json%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts%2F25075&t=Lizzie%20Borden%E2%80%99s%20legend%20kicks%20off%20Theatre%20Aurora%20season%20on%20a%20%E2%80%9Cdark%E2%80%9D%20note&s=100&p[url]=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers-online.com%2Fauroran%2Fwp-json%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fposts%2F25075&p[images][0]=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newspapers-online.com%2Fauroran%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F10%2F2019-10-24-02.jpg&p[title]=Lizzie%20Borden%E2%80%99s%20legend%20kicks%20off%20Theatre%20Aurora%20season%20on%20a%20%E2%80%9Cdark%E2%80%9D%20note\" "\\"Share")
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