California Shakespeare Theater will follow up its season opener Titus Andronicus with The Verona Project, a brand-new hybrid of play and concert, inspired in part by Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona. The world-premiere production, which is written, composed, and directed by nationally-acclaimed director Amanda Dehnert in her Cal Shakes debut, plays at the Bruns Amphitheater, July 6 through July 31.

The Verona Project isn’t just a play. It’s also a band—composed of eight actors playing three times as many instruments, performing a hybrid of theater and rock concert that marries Shakespeare to fairytales to real life, infusing it all with enough joyful exuberance to rock the Bruns Amphitheater to the imaginary rafters.

The story revolves around childhood best friends Proteus and Valentine; Julia, the girl who comes between them; the princely Silvio who complicates everyone’s story; and the truth-seeking, identity-finding, fairytale-twisting path that brings them all together again—not that much older but a whole lot wiser.

“I really love the characters Shakespeare created,” says Dehnert, “and they have inspired me to dive deeper into the various natures of love, loss, and self-discovery. I believe that to love and to lose are inextricably tied together; loving something or someone is perhaps the riskiest and most rewarding thing we can do in the course of our lives, and it’s what can cause us the most pain. The characters in Verona are struggling with the experience of first love, which I think is something we can all connect to. They are also trying to figure out who they are as individuals, and who they want to grow up to become.”

The actor/musician cast members of The Verona Project are all making their Cal Shakes debuts with this production: Arwen Anderson (Love in American Times at San Jose Rep, Tales of the City workshop at A.C.T.) as Julia; Dan Clegg (Young Scrooge in A Christmas Carol at A.C.T., numerous productions in Montreal including The Rocky Horror Show and Equus) as Proteus; Marisa Duchowny (Tales of the City workshop at A.C.T., Chicago with Prima del Teatro in San Miniato, Italy) as Sylvio’s Mother; Phil Mills (featured principal vocalist at San Francisco Symphony’s A Celebration of Leonard Bernstein; numerous productions for A.C.T.’s MFA program including Macbeth and Hamlet) as Sylvio; Harold Pierce (The Seagull at Marin Theatre Company, plus roles at TheatreFIRST, Impact Theatre, and Shotgun) as Speed; Nate Trinrud (Peter Pan: a Play at Lookingglass, Fly By Night at TheatreWorks) as Valentine, Elena Wright (The Salt Plays: Part I and Part II at Shotgun, Dead Man’s Cell Phone at Sonoma Rep) as Thuria, and Adam Yazbeck (The Kite Runner, The Glass Menagerie at San Jose Rep; The Lion in Winter at Shakespeare Santa Cruz) as the Duke.

The design team includes: Daniel Ostling (set design) who designed last season’s Macbeth and Much Ado About Nothing, and who received a Tony nomination for Best Scenic Design for Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses; Melissa Torchia (costume design), making her Cal Shakes debut, having recently completed her Masters in Costume Design from Northwestern University, and who has designed for Lookingglass and Steppenwolf in Chicago; David Cuthbert (lighting design), whose credits include lighting and media designs for San Jose Rep, the Magic, the Old Globe and Arena Stage; and Josh Horvath (music production and sound design), an Artistic Associate at Lookingglass, who has created soundscapes at the Kennedy Center, Long Wharf, Chicago Shakespeare, and Lincoln Center, to name a few. Others on the artistic staff of the production are Associate Artist Domenique Lozano (vocal/text coach); Dave Maier (fight director), Megan Q. Sada (stage manager), and Laxmi Kumaran (assistant stage manager).

Amanda Dehnert is a director, composer, and adapter. Her recent projects include: Julius Caesar and All’s Well That Ends Well (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); Peter Pan (A Play) (Lookingglass Theatre Company), which she wrote and directed; Death of a Salesman (Dallas Theatre Center); The Fantasticks (Long Wharf and Arena Stage); and Cabaret (Stratford Shakespeare Festival). She currently serves as an Associate Professor in the theater department at Northwestern University. Prior to that, she taught for the Brown University/Trinity Rep MFA program. Ms Dehnert has held various positions with Trinity Rep, culminating with her serving as the Acting Artistic Director for the 2005-2006 season. Productions for Trinity Rep include Cyrano de Bergerac, Henry IV, West Side Story, A Moon for the Misbegotten, Annie, The Skin of Our Teeth, Noises Off, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, My Fair Lady, Othello, Saint Joan, We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay!, and A Christmas Carol. As a composer, she has written scores and songs for much of her own work as well as for The Imaginary Invalid, The Cider House Rules, As You Like It, and a new adaptation of A Christmas Carol, co-authored with Oskar Eustis, which premiered in Boston in 2003.

Single tickets for The Verona Project range from $35-$66, with discounts available for seniors, students, persons age 30 and under, and groups. Prices, dates, and artists subject to change. For information or to charge tickets by phone with VISA, MasterCard or American Express, call the Cal Shakes Box Office at 510.548.9666. Additional information and online ticketing are available at www.calshakes.org.

In the months leading up to our 2011 Main Stage season, we’ll be profiling the creative minds behind the season’s productions—Titus Andronicus, The Verona Project, Candida, and The Taming of the Shrew—in our e-newsletters. For February’s installment, we’re featuring adapter and director Amanda Dehnert, who will helm The Verona Project, a world-premiere, music-filled adaptation of The Two Gentlemen of Verona. What follows is the full transcript of Cal Shakes’ email interview with Amanda. To sign up for our email newsletter, click here.

What projects are you working on right now? What have you done most recently?

Right now, I’m getting ready to head to Ashland to direct Julius Caesar. I’m also getting ready to direct a workshop of a new musical with Lookingglass Theatre in Chicago, a production of Jaques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris for the Two River Theater Company in NJ, and, of course, The Verona Project! While all that’s happening, I’m also teaching for Northwestern University in Chicago. Most recently, I directed my own adaptation of JM Barrie’s Peter Pan for Lookingglass.

You’ve made a name for yourself reimagining musicals such as The Fantasticks and My Fair Lady. How do you approach the reinvention of something so venerated as a Shakespeare play? How is infusing a nonmusical play with music different from reimagining a classic musical?

It’s funny—I do think I have a reputation for reimagining the musicals, but I also have a different reputation (depending on who you talk to) for reimagining Shakespeare. Ultimately, I really believe that theater is about telling a story, and telling it honestly and specifically. I like to work with great stories. I believe a great story is one that taps into the things that are most true about what it is to be a person, to live a life, to make mistakes, to search, to love, to lose, and to learn. The greatest musicals stand the test of time because they tell stories that connect to people in these ways; and the greatest classic plays stand up for the same reasons. So, for me, it’s all the same in a way. As long as you have a great story and you keep it honest, you can have a great evening in the theater. I also think that there is always music in Shakespeare, sometimes literally with songs, but always with the sensibility in the writing. A soliloquy is much like a solo song. To me, it’s easy to understand how any Shakespeare play can also hold music.

Can you share any early thoughts on The Verona Project?

I really love the characters Shakespeare created, and they have inspired me to dive deeper into the various natures of love, loss, and self-discovery. I believe that to love and to lose are inextricably tied together; loving something or someone is perhaps the riskiest and most rewarding thing we can do in the course of our lives, and it’s what can cause us the most pain. The characters in Verona are struggling with the experience of first love, which I think is something we can all connect to. They are also trying to figure out who they are as individuals and who they want to grow up to become. They are adventurous, wonderful, awful, funny, completely real people. This adaptation works like a modern once-upon-a-time, and it is simultaneously infused with both the youthful spirit of self-expression and discovery and the awareness that we always can get from fables—that this is something universal and timeless. I’m terribly excited about it and about our wonderful cast.

What’s the first piece of theater you ever saw? Alternately (or in addition), what was the first piece you saw that really made you think, “I want to be a part of this”?

The first piece I remember seeing was A Christmas Carol at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. I can remember being terrified of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come—and I can also remember being so thrilled that I could simultaneously be sitting in a seat watching a story and feel like I was sitting in the room of my imagination, experiencing a real thing. I have always loved the power of stories, and always been incredibly amazed at how theater lets us all create worlds in our minds, and feel and experience things that we might not let ourselves take the time to think about in our everyday lives.

Who are your all-time favorite directors? Theater and film?

Gosh … I really believe I can take something away from absolutely everything, so it’s hard to have favorites. I’d say my personal heroes are Peter Brook, Federico Fellini, Tim Burton, Mary Zimmerman, Adrian Hall, Richard Jenkins, Des McAnuff, Joe Papp, Terry Gilliam, Bertolt Brecht, Pina Bausch, Simon McBurney/Complicite … I could go on. Anyone who pursues their craft and tells the story of the world the way they see it inspires me to be a better artist. I also have a particular liking for anyone who can find new ways to break the “rules”—because the most amazing thing about storytelling is that anything should be at your disposal!

Finally, if you could have directed any play in history, what (and/or where, and/or with whom) would it be?

This one is tricky! I do tend to be more excited about looking forwards than looking backwards…I would have liked to have been in the room when John Caird and Trevor Nunn were making the RSC production of Nicholas Nickleby; I would not have liked to have directed it, I just wish I could have been there to watch them do it! I feel that way about many productions. I think my dream would be to have time-traveling-fly-on-the-wall skills. Then I could watch everyone who ever made anything. That would be great!

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Pictured above: Michael Stone Forrest as Hucklebee, Timothy Ware as Matt, Nate Dendy as The Mute, Sebastian La Cause as El Gallo, Addi McDaniel as Lusia and Jerome Lucas Harmann as Bellomy in Arena Stage’s production of The Fantasticks directed by Amanda Dehnert in the 2009-10 season; photo by Scott Suchman.