One-Hour Shakespeare

The Tragedies

Julie Fain Lawrence-Edsell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429557781
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

The One-Hour Shakespeare series is a collection of abridged versions of Shakespeare's plays, designed specifically to accommodate both small and large casts.

This volume, The Tragedies, includes the following plays:

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• Hamlet

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• Julius Caesar

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• Macbeth

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• Othello

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• Romeo and Juliet

These accessible and versatile scripts are supported by: an introduction with emphasis on the evolution of the series and the creative process of editing; the One-Hour projects in performance, a chapter on implementing money-saving ideas and suggestions for production, whether in or outside a classroom setting; specific lesson plans to incorporate these projects successfully into an academic course; and cross-gender casting suggestions. These supplementary materials make the plays valuable not only for actors, directors and professors, but for any environment, cast or purpose.

Ideal for both academics and professionals, One-Hour Shakespeare is the perfect companion to teaching and staging the most universally read and performed playwright in history.

1

Introduction

Shakespeare was my first love. I remember growing up, my family would pile into our old Dodge station wagon and drive 12 hours up the California coast to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. There we would pitch a tent at the KOA campground and, come rain or shine, watch seven provocative plays in five days. This annual pilgrimage hooked me on William Shakespeare by the time I was 11 years old.

For the past 25 years, I’ve been successfully working in the entertainment industry as an actor, director and independent film producer and, since 2012, as a Professor of Acting at Pace University, the School of Performing Arts in New York City. At the university, my specialty is scene study with classical texts and the highlight for my students are the accessible One-Hour Shakespeare projects I’ve successfully implemented as lesson plans.

These personal edits and abridged versions of Shakespeare’s classics are a perfect length for academic and professional productions and are designed specifically to accommodate small casts (5–8 actors), if you choose, or casts as numerous as the character count is in each play. There are suggestions of double and triple casting and, in some cases, character lines have been combined and some characters have been omitted. Acting companies and students can take these one-hour versions and perform them with or without production resources and still reap the benefits of the magnificent plays of William Shakespeare.

My creative process for editing these plays of Shakespeare down to an hour is first based on paying respect to the original text, rhythm, meter and through-line of the main characters in each play. I use multiple editions of each play to refer to throughout the editing process; The Arden Shakespeare, The Oxford Shakespeare, the Folger Shakespeare Library editions, The New Cambridge editions, The Pelican Shakespeare, The Signet classics, The Riverside Shakespeare, The Folio Society editions and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare online at http://shakespeare.mit.edu. Each editor takes a license with punctuation and the endings of words (“ed” or “’d”) as well as many other word endings and spellings. I take the same license when editing the full text down to an hour. There are inconsistencies and variations on words, punctuation and formatting throughout all editions of Shakespeare’s plays in print based on editorial choices and on whether an editor is using the First Folio or one of the Quarto versions as their source.

Each play in this collection includes line numbers and selected definitions. The line numbers will not correspond to the original line numbers in the full text of each play with the exception of the very beginning of each scene. Line numbers are included for easy reference during study and rehearsals. In regard to word definitions, I encourage actors and educators to use the Shakespeare Lexicon and Quotation Dictionary (Volumes I and II) by Alexander Schmidt, Dover Publications Inc., which does identify words by play, act, scene and original line numbers. It’s an invaluable resource and what I used for all definitions in this series.

Each one-hour play in the collection has been performance vetted by members of the 2015–2018 BFA Acting classes of The School of Performing Arts at Pace University, NYC.

Please enjoy the accessibility of these personal edits, in-performance production suggestions, lesson plans and cast list suggestions. My hope is that these projects will ultimately inspire actors, audiences and educators alike to then pick up the complete text of each play and engage in Shakespeare more fully.

2

One-Hour projects in performance

Money-saving suggestions to consider with a minimal budget

Shakespeare’s plays have proven successful in performance, time and time again, set in any time period and any location. This provides a great deal of artistic freedom and creativity when considering how you will structure your projects. Some fundamental production ideas to consider are what your theatre space will look like, where it will be, whether you will have access to lighting equipment, whether you will have access to scenery or basic furniture and what design choices you will make for costumes and sound.

Theatre space

Any room or area, inside or outside, can be made into a performance space. The “playing space” or stage is defined by where the audience is placed, choice of entrances and exits, and any scenery and lighting available. Some spaces to consider might include the following.

Traditional theatre space

This space is already defined, often with a raised stage and a proscenium arch, but you have the choice to use entrances and exits through the audience aisles as well as the on-stage wings.

Figure 1Traditional theatre space – audience out front

Black Box theatre or any classroom or multi-purpose room

The space can be defined in multiple ways; traditional (sometimes referred to as proscenium; Figure 1), a thrust stage (Figure 2), a traverse stage which has a center alley for the playing space (Figure 3) or theatre in the round (Figures 4 and 5).

Figure 2Thrust stage – seating on three sides

Figure 3Traverse stage – audience on opposite sides

Figure 4Theatre in the round – audience on all sides

Figure 5Theatre in the round – audience on all sides

Outdoor area

These spaces are limitless. Some areas to consider might include a quad or green space of a campus, a park, a private garden, a rooftop, an area of a beach, etc. The same principle of defining the space for a black box theater can be used here. Where do you want your audience? Where is your “playing space”?

Outdoor environments cannot be as easily controlled as a traditional or indoor theatre space due to lights and sounds. There may be birds, insects, rabbits, honking cars, planes flying overhead, loud voices and the weather to contend with. However, all of these environmental factors can create fantastic and spontaneous in-the-moment performance opportunities, which can be thrilling for actors and audiences alike.

Site specific areas

These spaces provide excellent and, sometimes, more controlled environments for a “playing space” depending on the specific site chosen. Permission to use the space may need to be granted, if the space is private. There is no limit to what one may consider a performance space. Some specific ideas to consider are:

•A small intimate library or the corner of a larger one to suggest the locations in Measure for Measure (Angelo’s office, a prison cell, Isabella’s place of worship, etc.). If you have access to a place of worship this could be a provocative and powerful location to choose.

•A school cafeteria, indoor or outdoor, to suggest a busy market place, the Rialto, the public court and other locales in The Merchant of Venice.

•A campground and its surroundings or a barnyard, stables and accompanying bales of hay to suggest the Forest of Arden and all locations in As You Like It.

•A park with benches and walkways to suggest the environments for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

•A green area adjacent to or in sight of a graveyard for Hamlet or even Macbeth. In one of the many film versions of Hamlet, the director chose to make Denmark the name of a corporation where Claudius works and not the country where Hamlet lives. The site-specific space used for many scenes was a Wall Street office building.

•The grand steps of a building to suggest the various locations of Rome in Julius Caesar (ancient Rome, the Senate, the Capital, an open Forum, etc.).

•Private walking gardens for Much Ado About Nothing.

•A courtyard surrounded by multi-level buildings (school buildings or apartments with a useable window), a structure with a front porch or an interior of a building with a staircase landing for the aloft scenes and all else in Romeo and Juliet.

•A futbol pitch or practice fields (from the 18-yard line through to the frame of the goal) to suggest the environments for Two Gentlemen of Verona. Valentine and Proteus can be two gentlemen “V”arsity athletes.

•A plot of beach for The Tempest.

Entrances and exits

Entrances and exits for the actors can be through the right and left wings both upstage and downstage in the traditional space, through any aisles in the audience, around the right or left corner areas of audience seats, upstage center of the stage space if there is masking hung which has a center separation or upstage far left and far right around masking if masking or a scrim is being used (entrance and exit options are pictured in Figures 1–5). Actors can also choose to have chairs placed on stage or in the audience and use those as their entrance and exit positions.

Defining your space

Once a space has been decided on, you have chosen how to configure the audience seating and you defined specific entrances and exits that the actors will use, here are some additional money-saving suggestions to consider...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 One-Hour projects in performance: Money-saving suggestions to consider with a minimal budget
• 3 Lesson plan and editing exercise
• 4 Cross-gender casting suggestions
• 5 Hamlet
• 6 Hamlet: Suggested cast list and character assignments for a small cast
• 7 Julius Caesar
• 8 Julius Caesar: Suggested cast list and character assignments for a small cast
• 9 Macbeth
• 10 Macbeth: Suggested cast list and character assignments for a small cast
• 11 Othello
• 12 Othello: Suggested cast list and character assignments for a small cast
• 13 Romeo and Juliet
• 14 Romeo and Juliet: Suggested cast list and character assignments for a small cast