'Rogues' stage a comeback

Last academic year, Company Carolina planned to perform Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus” on UNC’s campus. The play was advertised as “Shakespeare’s earliest and bloodiest tragedy,” but objections over the gore caused Company Carolina to drop the show.

Already two weeks into rehearsal, most of the cast and crew decided that they wanted to perform the show on their own in another student’s backyard rather than abandon it.

The group named themselves the Rogue Players, and though it was created just to perform “Titus,” one semester later the group is working on its second production.

“It wasn’t really an idea of an organization at first,” said Madeline Hurley, a junior dramatic arts major who is in the Rogue Players.

“There was a lot of joking around that we were going to be ‘Rogue Titus,’ and then the phrase stuck.”

The group was born out of controversy, but members say they have not let that define them.

Daniel Doyle is a junior dramatic arts major who was an actor in “Titus” and another member of the Rogue Players.

“It’s really nice to see that because censorship is a thing, it’s going to be a thing, it’s always been a thing,” he said.

Andrew Jones, a senior journalism major in the group, said members do not want to be defined by breaking away from Company Carolina — they just want to perform plays and enjoy the process behind it.

“We’re trying not to put labels on ourselves that define ourselves because then we put ourselves in a box, and then people will say, ‘Oh Rogue Players, they stand for blah, blah, blah,’ but that’s really not what we’re about,” he said.

Jones and other members of the cast and crew said they enjoyed their experience in a group free from artistic constraints.

Ben Elling, a senior dramatic arts major, was not involved with “Titus,” but after he saw the show he wanted to a part of the Rogue Players.

“From that night forward it’s been on my mind, ‘How can I get involved with this to a greater degree, and how can we make this happen again?’” he said.

While the cast and crew of “Titus” make up the majority of Rogue Players members working on the group’s upcoming production of “Pelleas et Melisande,” the troupe brought in new people like Elling to direct and senior chemistry major Jeff Hymes to do an original score.

Elling said that although he may be the director of “Pelleas et Melisande,” he is not in charge of the group or even the show, and the group isn’t even strictly student theater.

“We have actors that are out in the community that are from Durham, and they heard about ‘Titus,’ and they wanted to get involved in ‘Titus,’ so we approached them to get involved again in (Pelleas et Melisande).”

Hurley said that if anyone is interested in collaborating with the Rogue Players, she wants them to join and contact the group.

Hymes said this openness is what he likes about the group.

“I love that part that there’s no lord,” he said.

“There’s nobody who’s looking down and saying, ‘Everybody has to do this and be here, and this is what’s happening,’ so we have to rely on each other and expect the best out of each other.”

arts@dailytarheel.com