Spread the Love: Shakespeare in an Hour

This week on Spread the Love, Lindsay and Craig talk about Theatrefolk’s Shakespeare in an Hour Series.

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Transcript

Welcome to Spread the Love. This week we are talking about our One Hour Shakespeare Series: This is what we’ve got: Taming of the Shrew, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet – These are the ones I’ve adapted. And then we also have: As You Like it, Twefth Night, and Much Ado About Nothing, adapted by John Minigan.

Our purpose is pretty simple. Original text, a performance focus as opposed to a reading focus, and a manageable length. Like an hour. Pretty simple, easy to follow. Craig what do you love about One Hour Shakespeare?

What I love about the One Hour Shakespeare’s is that there’s a sidebar on every single page filled with notes. The notes cover vocabulary help, story help, characters suggestions, stage directions, and so on. What I also love is how much care has been taken with the cuttings of the scripts. The language is all Shakespeare’s original language. They’re just cut down for time. The cuttings are smooth and the stories flow along like a dish of microwaved butter. Lindsay what do you love about the One Hour Shakespeares?

How am I supposed to top microwaved butter?

With some popcorn?

That goes underneath! I love Shakespeare period. And nothing has enforced this love more than doing these cuttings. It’s amazing how relevant the characters and stories are. How beautiful the language can be. Our goal is that teenagers perform Shakespeare – not just read it, perform it. And we’ll do whatever we can do to make that happen. The Shakespeare in an Hour are a great introduction to the language, the characters, the stories, the plays of Shakespeare. That’s it for Spread the Love.