Suggested Inaugural Season for the VLA-Black Hills Shakespeare Festival
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G.Robin Smith -
Nov 5, 2010, 7:13:00 PM11/5/10
to VLA-Shakespeare
(NB, it's not "The 1st Annual" it's: "The Inaugural Season")
Here is a suggested Inaugural Season, with some notes.
This would require about twenty stages, divided up amongst community
centers and educational (High School, Community College and
University) stages and any semi-pro/pro stages taking part, Libraries
as well as outdoor venues (football fields) and all the other
performing spaces provided by participating groups.
VLA-SHAKESPEARE:
EVERY PLAY - EVERY YEAR
With the potential to involve many of the communities In the Black
Hills/Mt. Rushmore Areas. These towns should all be invited to
participate.
Ashland Heights,
Belle Fourche,
Beulah,
Blackhawk,
Box Elder,
Buffalo Gap,
Central City,
Custer,
Deadwood,
Ellsworth AFB,
Fairburn,
Four Corners,
Fruitdale,
Hermosa,
Hill City,
Hot Springs,
Kadoka,
Keystone,
Lead,
Lemmon,
Moorcroft,
Newcastle,
Newell,
Nisland,
Oral,
Osage,
Piedmont,
Rapid City,
Spearfish,
St. Unge,
Sturgis,
Summerset,
Sundance,
Upton,
Wall,
Whitehead.
Whitewood.
Main Stage and Large Productions:
1) Romeo & Juliet with a mostly Native American Cast, with Capulet's
and Montague's being the Sioux and Cheyenne, for example and Mercutio
being European.
2a) Comedy of Errors
and
2b) Tempest (in Repertory)
Traditional Presentation.
3) Comedy of Tempests (Great Speeches from Shakespeare)
Done at Senior Centers, or in Business Spaces.
4) Crowd Hamlet (Experimental. Everyone on the "Stage" a basketball
court, perhaps. No Scripts. Everyone helps push the play along
remembering what they can of the parts.
5) RABBLE-POWERED SHAKESPEARE: Henry V. Traditional Production with
a rehearsed cast, except the Armies are cast from an entire town. They
get training in safe stage combat techniques. Staged in a large field
or football stadium. The Main Cast gets mic'd. The "Armies" flood the
field in a pre-choreographed melee' to mimic an actual battle, but in
reality more like a Marching Band, i.e. no actual hitting for the
Rabble.
6) Fight Scenes and Love Scenes. 'If Music be the Food of Love, PLay
On MacDuff!'
A Series of great Love Scenes and great Fight Scenes.
7) Drunkards, Fooles, Jesters & Clowns
From Falstaff to Feste, Costard to Caliban, the merry lives of
Windsor's best poet - Shakespeare's Funnymen.
A comedy / improv gathering of the Abbott's and Costello's of
Shakespeaer's Time.
8) Video Shakespeare (one camera per character)
One of the plays, filmed and broadcast. Every character has a camera
on them from the opening scene until the end. Everyone is "on" from
start to finish.
Tempest or MacBeth are good candidates.
9) Taming of the Shrew (with multiple endings demanded by Sly)
Kate as Serious. Kate as Sarcastic. Kate and Petruchio have come to an
understanding.
10a) Playing with Shakespeare - Workshop Performances showing how a
play can be molded by direction and interpretation. Good for school
performances.
10b) A Shakespeare Play, in a Day (4 main players, all else from
audience)
10 c) A Four-Actor Shakespeare Festival. Any of the plays, done with
just 4 Actors.
11) Speak-Along Shakespeare (think Handel's Messiah, only with W.S.)
12) Shakespeare on Trial (the authorship debate played out with the
Audience as Jury and local Lawyers arguing the case)
13) Examination of the 'lesser' plays with major portions acted out.
(Lecture Series)
14) All's Well that Ends Well (As a French Farce)
15a) Richard II
15b) Richard III (Traditional, in Repertory)
16) Sonnets and Epic Poems (done in a reading or performance)
17) Other Elizabethan Playwrights (a festival of read scripts. Kyd,
Marloe, Greene, Beaumont & Fletcher)
18) Julius Caesar (Julia Caesar - with women in the roles)
19) Reduced Shakespeare - all the plays, in an evening. Comical.
20) Shakespeare Back Stage - Get Tourists to come and Volunteer for a
day or more of making costumes, sets, props, sound effects.
21) Film Series - (Libraries) Shakespeare on Film. The 100 best and
worst. With Discussions.
22) Radio Shakespeare - Discussions, articles, comments, audience
questions Podcasts done over the Black Hills Bard Internet Radio
Network (World Wide Audience) Ehren Zeigler hosting.
23) New Shakespeare - Modern works done to Elizabethan Standards.
Perhaps a contest.
24) A Midsummer Night's Dream (Traditional) in a large park or trail
through wilderness.
25) Working the Scene - a play with the audience inputting direction
or asking 'what would happen IF?' (Romeo was a Creep, Gertrude killed
King Hamlet AND Ophelia, Iago was right about Othello.)
26) What would happen IF? What if Falstaff walked in on Macbeth?
(Improv Clubs) Working on the Theme that there are about 40 Characters
in all of Shakespeare and they are recycled.
27) The Music and the Dance? The music and the dance of Elizabethan
England.
Maypoles, Labyrinths & Morrismen. Crumhorns, Shawms & Sackbuts.
Playforde, Peasecods & Bransles. The music from the plays and the
times.
27b) Variations on the theme - Jazz, etc. variations on Shakespeare
themes.
28) The Arts and Crafts of Elizabethan Times.
Craft Fairs. Venue Attendance Passports. T-Shirts, Souvenirs. Also
done at State & County Fairs and in the businesses around the
performance venues.
29) New Renditions: Boys from Syracuse, Swinging the Dream, O (the
modern musical Othello), Kiss Me Kate, Ballet versions, Opera.
30) Children's Shakespeare Festival
31) Period Set Modern Writ Play Festival: Curt Mantle, Lady's Not for
Burning, Beckett, Lion in Winter, Anne of 1,000 Days, To Each Their
Own.
32) Game Show Shakespeare - Who said what? Pictionary, Charades
33) Podcast / Videocast of each production.
34) Puppet Presentations/Mime and alt. productions such as "Hamlet -
10 be or not 10 be". - The play in Binary Code on a looping computer
program shown in libraries.
Plug & Play Shakespeare, playing the jokes and tropes that are alike
from one play to another, one after another.
35) Inspired by Shakespeare: Art Shows of painting, sculpture, other
art works inspired by the Bard.
36) A Renaissance Faire (small at first)
37) The Bard-Free Zone Festival (and we sell them the signs that say
so, for identifying stores and eateries people can go into to avoid
any talk or sights of the Shakespeare going on around them..)
38) The Bard, Behind Bars. Shakespeare in the Prisons, workshops and
performances.
39) Travelogues from people who have gone to Shakespeare Festivals
around the country and around the world.
40) Ground Breaking for the Actual Festival HQ and eventual Central
Performance Center, where ever that may be.
41) Fevered MacBeth. The entire play is a reaction to the fevered
nightmares of the dying from a great battle. Mourning women are
transferred by the minds of the dying into the Witches. Duncan is
already dead. Only MacDuff survives. Lady MacBeth is one of the
witches, going in and out of roles. A Nightmare, dripping Truth upon
the stage.
42a) Henry IV Part I
42b) Henry IV Part II
42c) Henry IV Part III Done in Repertory
43) Titus Andronicus - Living Puppet. A group of readers present the
words and dancers on stage in black move the giant puppets in a
weaving spell of allegorical myth to bring the play alive.
44) Winter's Tale - Collection of Scenes, one in each room of a
school. Each scene is done over and over. People go in and out of the
rooms in random order to see its pieces and figure out the story.
All Other of the Canon done in Reader's Theatre versions or other
creative ways. [see the list below]
PLUS: Shakespeare Fest at the START & END of the Festival. Big Party
at HQ for all participants after the festival season.
So -
Tragedies:
Titus Andronicus - Living Puppet
Romeo and Juliet - Sioux & Cheyenne
Julius Caesar - Julia Caesar, an all Woman Caesar.
Hamlet - Danced, Rapped, Spraypainting/Skateboards. A wild youth
version.
Also, the Crowd Hamlet experimental mentioned above.
Also Traditional.
Othello - Concert Opera, mixed with the Musical 'O'.
Othello - Acted - set in an insane asylum
Timon of Athens, Banking Crisis/Financial Meltdown version.
King Lear, Retirement Home/Big Business mix version.
Macbeth, Bloody Battlefield Nightmare. Acted, Danced.
Antony and Cleopatra, Reader's Theatre
Coriolanus - Reader's Theatre
Comedies:
The Two Gentlemen of Verona - Read with Acted Scenes - relating to
similar scenes found in the other Plays
The Taming of the Shrew - Traditional, with Sly re-directing the
ending several times.
The Comedy of Errors - In the Parks, based on Greenstage's production
in Seattle. Vibrant. Done in Rep. with Tempest.
Love's Labour's Lost - Rock & Roll Princes, with the Princess and
Court being classical musicians.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, - Hiker's Version. Done on the Trail and In
the Woods - audience traveling through the forest with them.
The Merchant of Venice - Dual Performance with discussion showing how
it would be done in different eras. Some comparison with Marlowe's Jew
of Malta.
The Merry Wives of Windsor - KeyStone Cop/Gilbert and Sullivan
version.
Much Ado About Nothing, in Rep with As You Like It and 12th Night.
As You Like It, in Rep with Much Ado and 12th Night
Twelfth Night, in Rep with As You Like It and Much Ado
Troilus and Cressida - Reader's Theatre with some acted scenes.
Measure for Measure - done by Lawyers. Reader's Theatre and some acted
scenes, in a Court House.
All's Well That Ends Well - French Farce/Mello-Drama version.
Pericles Prince of Tyre - Done in Banks with Headphones and iPods
loaded with the Dialogue. The acting mimed - and quiet. Audience hears
the dialogue on the headphones.
The Winter's Tale - Multi-room and multi repeating scene version,
audience randomly going into different scenes.
Cymbeline - Reader's Theatre with some acted scenes.
The Tempest - Done in Rep in the Parks with Comedy of Errors.
Could also be done in Rep with itself. 1) Very Dance-oriented with
Ariel like a Japanese Bunraku. 2) "Biker Tempest" with Ariel as a 300
lb. tattooed spike-chained Harley rider.
Histories:
Richard II, Done in Rep with Richard III
Richard III, Done in Rep with Richard II
King John, Reader's Theatre with acted scenes for highlight in Rep
with Henry VIII
Henry VIII, Reader's Theatre with acted scenes for highlight in Rep
with King John
1 Henry VI, Part 1, Rep with H VI parts 2 & 3
2 Henry VI, Part 2, Rep with H VI parts 1 & 3
3 Henry VI, Part 3, Rep with H VI parts 1 & 2
1 Henry IV, Part 1, Rep with H IV part 2
2 Henry IV, Part 2, Rep with H IV part 1
Henry V. Football Field with Mass Cast for the battle scenes.
Reader's Theatre of Double Falsehood, Edward II, and any others that
'may' have been W.S. influenced.
Add in (eventually) the Contemporary Elizabethan Playwright Festival,
celebrating Cervantes, Marlowe, Ben Johnson, Edward Alleyn, Burbage,
George Chapman, Fletcher, Beaumont, Gabriel Harvey, Thomas Middleton,
Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe, Moll Frith, Decker-Ford-Rowley, Thomas
Kyd...
-30-= ###
Here is a suggested Inaugural Season, with some notes.
This would require about twenty stages, divided up amongst community
centers and educational (High School, Community College and
University) stages and any semi-pro/pro stages taking part, Libraries
as well as outdoor venues (football fields) and all the other
performing spaces provided by participating groups.
VLA-SHAKESPEARE:
EVERY PLAY - EVERY YEAR
With the potential to involve many of the communities In the Black
Hills/Mt. Rushmore Areas. These towns should all be invited to
participate.
Ashland Heights,
Belle Fourche,
Beulah,
Blackhawk,
Box Elder,
Buffalo Gap,
Central City,
Custer,
Deadwood,
Ellsworth AFB,
Fairburn,
Four Corners,
Fruitdale,
Hermosa,
Hill City,
Hot Springs,
Kadoka,
Keystone,
Lead,
Lemmon,
Moorcroft,
Newcastle,
Newell,
Nisland,
Oral,
Osage,
Piedmont,
Rapid City,
Spearfish,
St. Unge,
Sturgis,
Summerset,
Sundance,
Upton,
Wall,
Whitehead.
Whitewood.
Main Stage and Large Productions:
1) Romeo & Juliet with a mostly Native American Cast, with Capulet's
and Montague's being the Sioux and Cheyenne, for example and Mercutio
being European.
2a) Comedy of Errors
and
2b) Tempest (in Repertory)
Traditional Presentation.
3) Comedy of Tempests (Great Speeches from Shakespeare)
Done at Senior Centers, or in Business Spaces.
4) Crowd Hamlet (Experimental. Everyone on the "Stage" a basketball
court, perhaps. No Scripts. Everyone helps push the play along
remembering what they can of the parts.
5) RABBLE-POWERED SHAKESPEARE: Henry V. Traditional Production with
a rehearsed cast, except the Armies are cast from an entire town. They
get training in safe stage combat techniques. Staged in a large field
or football stadium. The Main Cast gets mic'd. The "Armies" flood the
field in a pre-choreographed melee' to mimic an actual battle, but in
reality more like a Marching Band, i.e. no actual hitting for the
Rabble.
6) Fight Scenes and Love Scenes. 'If Music be the Food of Love, PLay
On MacDuff!'
A Series of great Love Scenes and great Fight Scenes.
7) Drunkards, Fooles, Jesters & Clowns
From Falstaff to Feste, Costard to Caliban, the merry lives of
Windsor's best poet - Shakespeare's Funnymen.
A comedy / improv gathering of the Abbott's and Costello's of
Shakespeaer's Time.
8) Video Shakespeare (one camera per character)
One of the plays, filmed and broadcast. Every character has a camera
on them from the opening scene until the end. Everyone is "on" from
start to finish.
Tempest or MacBeth are good candidates.
9) Taming of the Shrew (with multiple endings demanded by Sly)
Kate as Serious. Kate as Sarcastic. Kate and Petruchio have come to an
understanding.
10a) Playing with Shakespeare - Workshop Performances showing how a
play can be molded by direction and interpretation. Good for school
performances.
10b) A Shakespeare Play, in a Day (4 main players, all else from
audience)
10 c) A Four-Actor Shakespeare Festival. Any of the plays, done with
just 4 Actors.
11) Speak-Along Shakespeare (think Handel's Messiah, only with W.S.)
12) Shakespeare on Trial (the authorship debate played out with the
Audience as Jury and local Lawyers arguing the case)
13) Examination of the 'lesser' plays with major portions acted out.
(Lecture Series)
14) All's Well that Ends Well (As a French Farce)
15a) Richard II
15b) Richard III (Traditional, in Repertory)
16) Sonnets and Epic Poems (done in a reading or performance)
17) Other Elizabethan Playwrights (a festival of read scripts. Kyd,
Marloe, Greene, Beaumont & Fletcher)
18) Julius Caesar (Julia Caesar - with women in the roles)
19) Reduced Shakespeare - all the plays, in an evening. Comical.
20) Shakespeare Back Stage - Get Tourists to come and Volunteer for a
day or more of making costumes, sets, props, sound effects.
21) Film Series - (Libraries) Shakespeare on Film. The 100 best and
worst. With Discussions.
22) Radio Shakespeare - Discussions, articles, comments, audience
questions Podcasts done over the Black Hills Bard Internet Radio
Network (World Wide Audience) Ehren Zeigler hosting.
23) New Shakespeare - Modern works done to Elizabethan Standards.
Perhaps a contest.
24) A Midsummer Night's Dream (Traditional) in a large park or trail
through wilderness.
25) Working the Scene - a play with the audience inputting direction
or asking 'what would happen IF?' (Romeo was a Creep, Gertrude killed
King Hamlet AND Ophelia, Iago was right about Othello.)
26) What would happen IF? What if Falstaff walked in on Macbeth?
(Improv Clubs) Working on the Theme that there are about 40 Characters
in all of Shakespeare and they are recycled.
27) The Music and the Dance? The music and the dance of Elizabethan
England.
Maypoles, Labyrinths & Morrismen. Crumhorns, Shawms & Sackbuts.
Playforde, Peasecods & Bransles. The music from the plays and the
times.
27b) Variations on the theme - Jazz, etc. variations on Shakespeare
themes.
28) The Arts and Crafts of Elizabethan Times.
Craft Fairs. Venue Attendance Passports. T-Shirts, Souvenirs. Also
done at State & County Fairs and in the businesses around the
performance venues.
29) New Renditions: Boys from Syracuse, Swinging the Dream, O (the
modern musical Othello), Kiss Me Kate, Ballet versions, Opera.
30) Children's Shakespeare Festival
31) Period Set Modern Writ Play Festival: Curt Mantle, Lady's Not for
Burning, Beckett, Lion in Winter, Anne of 1,000 Days, To Each Their
Own.
32) Game Show Shakespeare - Who said what? Pictionary, Charades
33) Podcast / Videocast of each production.
34) Puppet Presentations/Mime and alt. productions such as "Hamlet -
10 be or not 10 be". - The play in Binary Code on a looping computer
program shown in libraries.
Plug & Play Shakespeare, playing the jokes and tropes that are alike
from one play to another, one after another.
35) Inspired by Shakespeare: Art Shows of painting, sculpture, other
art works inspired by the Bard.
36) A Renaissance Faire (small at first)
37) The Bard-Free Zone Festival (and we sell them the signs that say
so, for identifying stores and eateries people can go into to avoid
any talk or sights of the Shakespeare going on around them..)
38) The Bard, Behind Bars. Shakespeare in the Prisons, workshops and
performances.
39) Travelogues from people who have gone to Shakespeare Festivals
around the country and around the world.
40) Ground Breaking for the Actual Festival HQ and eventual Central
Performance Center, where ever that may be.
41) Fevered MacBeth. The entire play is a reaction to the fevered
nightmares of the dying from a great battle. Mourning women are
transferred by the minds of the dying into the Witches. Duncan is
already dead. Only MacDuff survives. Lady MacBeth is one of the
witches, going in and out of roles. A Nightmare, dripping Truth upon
the stage.
42a) Henry IV Part I
42b) Henry IV Part II
42c) Henry IV Part III Done in Repertory
43) Titus Andronicus - Living Puppet. A group of readers present the
words and dancers on stage in black move the giant puppets in a
weaving spell of allegorical myth to bring the play alive.
44) Winter's Tale - Collection of Scenes, one in each room of a
school. Each scene is done over and over. People go in and out of the
rooms in random order to see its pieces and figure out the story.
All Other of the Canon done in Reader's Theatre versions or other
creative ways. [see the list below]
PLUS: Shakespeare Fest at the START & END of the Festival. Big Party
at HQ for all participants after the festival season.
So -
Tragedies:
Titus Andronicus - Living Puppet
Romeo and Juliet - Sioux & Cheyenne
Julius Caesar - Julia Caesar, an all Woman Caesar.
Hamlet - Danced, Rapped, Spraypainting/Skateboards. A wild youth
version.
Also, the Crowd Hamlet experimental mentioned above.
Also Traditional.
Othello - Concert Opera, mixed with the Musical 'O'.
Othello - Acted - set in an insane asylum
Timon of Athens, Banking Crisis/Financial Meltdown version.
King Lear, Retirement Home/Big Business mix version.
Macbeth, Bloody Battlefield Nightmare. Acted, Danced.
Antony and Cleopatra, Reader's Theatre
Coriolanus - Reader's Theatre
Comedies:
The Two Gentlemen of Verona - Read with Acted Scenes - relating to
similar scenes found in the other Plays
The Taming of the Shrew - Traditional, with Sly re-directing the
ending several times.
The Comedy of Errors - In the Parks, based on Greenstage's production
in Seattle. Vibrant. Done in Rep. with Tempest.
Love's Labour's Lost - Rock & Roll Princes, with the Princess and
Court being classical musicians.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, - Hiker's Version. Done on the Trail and In
the Woods - audience traveling through the forest with them.
The Merchant of Venice - Dual Performance with discussion showing how
it would be done in different eras. Some comparison with Marlowe's Jew
of Malta.
The Merry Wives of Windsor - KeyStone Cop/Gilbert and Sullivan
version.
Much Ado About Nothing, in Rep with As You Like It and 12th Night.
As You Like It, in Rep with Much Ado and 12th Night
Twelfth Night, in Rep with As You Like It and Much Ado
Troilus and Cressida - Reader's Theatre with some acted scenes.
Measure for Measure - done by Lawyers. Reader's Theatre and some acted
scenes, in a Court House.
All's Well That Ends Well - French Farce/Mello-Drama version.
Pericles Prince of Tyre - Done in Banks with Headphones and iPods
loaded with the Dialogue. The acting mimed - and quiet. Audience hears
the dialogue on the headphones.
The Winter's Tale - Multi-room and multi repeating scene version,
audience randomly going into different scenes.
Cymbeline - Reader's Theatre with some acted scenes.
The Tempest - Done in Rep in the Parks with Comedy of Errors.
Could also be done in Rep with itself. 1) Very Dance-oriented with
Ariel like a Japanese Bunraku. 2) "Biker Tempest" with Ariel as a 300
lb. tattooed spike-chained Harley rider.
Histories:
Richard II, Done in Rep with Richard III
Richard III, Done in Rep with Richard II
King John, Reader's Theatre with acted scenes for highlight in Rep
with Henry VIII
Henry VIII, Reader's Theatre with acted scenes for highlight in Rep
with King John
1 Henry VI, Part 1, Rep with H VI parts 2 & 3
2 Henry VI, Part 2, Rep with H VI parts 1 & 3
3 Henry VI, Part 3, Rep with H VI parts 1 & 2
1 Henry IV, Part 1, Rep with H IV part 2
2 Henry IV, Part 2, Rep with H IV part 1
Henry V. Football Field with Mass Cast for the battle scenes.
Reader's Theatre of Double Falsehood, Edward II, and any others that
'may' have been W.S. influenced.
Add in (eventually) the Contemporary Elizabethan Playwright Festival,
celebrating Cervantes, Marlowe, Ben Johnson, Edward Alleyn, Burbage,
George Chapman, Fletcher, Beaumont, Gabriel Harvey, Thomas Middleton,
Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe, Moll Frith, Decker-Ford-Rowley, Thomas
Kyd...
-30-= ###
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