"Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds"

- Shakespeare's Sonnet 116

After 17 years of sharing their love of theater with the community, Theatre in the Rough's co-artistic directors and co-founders Aaron Elmore and Katie Jensen will have a chance to show their love again this weekend - this time in the riotous but romantic roles of a shrew and a poor nobleman.

"Taming of the Shrew," a comedy by William Shakespeare, will open tonight at the old Elks Hall, 117 S. Franklin St., under first-time director and longtime local actor Ed Christian.

"It's a delightful comedy," Elmore said. "It's a play about honesty, the value of honesty and the value of the meeting of true minds."

To highlight this theme of love and honesty, Christian, who plays Christopher Sly during the induction, will read the above sonnet during the epilogue.

"It means that real love doesn't change with the weather, doesn't change when people get sick," Elmore said of the phrase. "It doesn't change when we're feeling lacking. It doesn't change when we run out of money. Real love is something that truly bears all those things and keeps going - it endures. That is really the love that Kate (the shrew) and Petruchio have found."

Elmore said he and his wife have wanted to perform "Taming of the Shrew" since they met.

"Once we met, we discovered our many mutual loves, probably the chief of which was theater," he said. "From that moment, I think we had it in our minds that, gosh, ... we were sort of made in the shade to play these parts. So we've kind of had it in our back pockets since then."

Understandably, "Taming of the Shrew" is a play within a play featuring the courting and eventual "taming" of Katherina (Jensen) - a headstrong, loud and bad-tempered woman - by Petruchio (Elmore) - a poor gentleman of Verona. The plot also reveals a complex competition between several suitors for the hand of Katherina's more manageable younger sister Bianca (Megan Behnke).

The play's drama arises from the house rule that Bianca can't marry until her older sister Katherina does. Unfortunately for Bianca, no one can stand Katherina. At the least, this intricate plot proves for an entertaining show.

"One of the main reasons why we're doing it is the delight and the delight for the audience," Elmore said. "Dramatic irony and the fun for the audience is, of course, that the audience knows who everybody is, or at least we hope they do, and they can see this person is in disguise and this person is pretending, but the characters on stage don't know."

Speaking of pretending, this particular production is a little different in respect to gender roles. In her second originally-male character, Becky Orford will play the sisters' mother, Baptista, originally written by Shakespeare as a father.

"It does, in a way, create this kind of simpatico relationship between Bianca and her mother," Elmore said of the mother-daughter relationship. "They're sort of the perfect Padua girls. They sort of look proper, and they do what's right. They sound right, and they dress right."

Other originally-male roles played to be played by women include The Lady (Patricia Hull) and Tranio (Shadow Hotch).

"(Shadow) does a wonderful job of pretending to be her master pretending to be a rich guy," Elmore said, "which is a lot of fun for the audience to watch somebody who is not used to doing that."

In all, Elmore believes the gender-switching in Theatre in the Rough's version will add to its value.

"Through the rest of the plot, it allows the best actor to take the part," he said. "And we've had some really fantastic results."

In the end, Elmore and the cast hope the audience will appreciate the care they take in playing these roles - regardless of gender.

"We approach these characters as real people, not as cartoons," Elmore said. "We approach the whole idea of this comedy and the idea of these characters honestly and with great affection."

And as if playing lovers wasn't enough, Elmore and Jensen will celebrate their 18th wedding anniversary on Monday. No doubt, their years together will add to their performances as Katherina and Petruchio.

"We don't always understand them, but I think once you spend two hours with these characters, you come to love them, know them, see what makes them tick and what they love," Elmore said. "I think that's a lot of fun for people, and I think that's why people will enjoy coming."

• Contact Neighbors editor Kim Andree at 523-2272 or kimberly.andree@juneauempire.com.