FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 2, 2011
(Boston, Massachusetts)
Contact: Cheryl Eagan-Donovan (781) 729-6204

SHAKESPEARE IN VENICE
A fundraising preview party, Carnivale in Venice, will take place on April 13th at Oberon in Cambridge, MA. The event will include a Venetian Carnivale celebration and masque, guest DJ, dancing, clips from the work in progress, and a rare live performance by Boston’s rock aristocracy The Upper Crust.

The Upper Crust, Boston’s most controversial band, have thus far, in the modern age, released four recordings, “Let Them Eat Rock”, “The Decline and Fall of the Upper Crust”, “Once More Into the Breeches”, and “Entitled” — a catalogue that exemplifies their quest for perfection in the field of Rocque and their quite natural preoccupation with the travails of a life of privilege and the many misunderstandings — at times humorous, at times tragic, but always infuriating — that invariably accompany it.

The party celebrates Controversy Films’ trip to Venice in May to film on location as production of the new feature length documentary, Nothing is Truer than Truth, continues this spring. Director Cheryl Eagan-Donovan and crew will visit the neighborhoods and landmarks referenced in the Shakespeare plays and visited by Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, during his continental tour in 1575-76.

Nothing is Truer than Truth focuses on the sixteen-month period when Edward de Vere escaped the confines of life at Elizabeth’s Court and traveled the Continent from his home base in Venice, gathering the material for the great canon that would become known as the works of Shakespeare. Deborah Cesana, Location Assistant for the films The Tourist and Merchant of Venice, will serve as Production Coordinator in Venice.

In addition to filming in Italy, this year’s production schedule for Controversy Films includes interviews with American Repertory Theater Director Diane Paulus, scholar Roger Strittmater, author and psychiatrist Richard Waugaman, Stephen Greenblatt, author of Will in the World, Tina Packer, founder of Shakespeare & Company, Steven Pinker, author of The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, and Academy Award winning actor F. Murray Abraham, as well as a visit to the Folger Shakespeare Library.

In January, Controversy Films was invited to The Century Club in New York, where Broadway producer Edgar Lansbury and scholar Gerit Quealy hosted a lecture by Mark Anderson, author of the Oxford biography Shakespeare By Another Name. In September, Eagan-Donovan spoke at the Ashland Authorship Conference and filmed interviews with Paul Nicholson, Director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and Michael Cecil, descendant of William Cecil, Lord Burghley.

OBERON is Boston’s exciting new destination for theater, drinks, and nightlife on the fringe of Harvard Square. Based on the belief that opportunities create artists and through its marriage of theater spectacle with the aura and energy of a nightclub, OBERON seeks to provide local and itinerant artists with a professional and supportive ‘access venue’ in which to develop and present new theatrical works for its community. OBERON is home to the international smash hit, The Donkey Show, a pulsing disco fantasy based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Funding for the Venice production has been provided by individual donors and by a grant from Shakespeare Fellowship Foundation. Tax-deductible donations to help fund the project can be made through the Independent Feature Project at www.ifp.org. Sponsors for the event include AV Presentations www.avpresentations.com and Women in Film & Video New England www.wifvne.org.

Oberon is located at Zero Arrow Street in Harvard Square, Cambridge. Tickets are available online at www.cluboberon.com.

For more information about The Upper Crust, go to www.theuppercrust.org.