Alternatives to a full play
Creating Fearless Shakespeare Scripts
Four proven alternatives to staging a full Shakespeare play — the organizing logic behind DT:FC’s Shakespeare libraries.
Shakespeare entertains and educates — in his time and 440+ years later. We have created, and you can create, alternatives to performing a whole Shakespeare play. We recommend alternative scripts when a whole play takes too long or doesn’t involve all available Players. Example scripts are provided throughout our libraries.
Leave the Language as Shakespeare’s Own
If you are thinking Shakespeare’s language is too difficult to speak, remember he wrote in a period of history where many people did not read — his plays are part of an oral tradition. It’s almost by chance that we have 37 of them. We leave the language as it is because when spoken the rhythm and content will carry the meaning. Read the plays aloud, even if by yourself. Be fearless.
When novice Players, including grade-schoolers, have permission to play with the language they naturally learn diction, voice intonation, and breath support.
“What translation did you use?”
Vocal Expression The Theatre-Games category that trains ear, breath, and diction — the warmup foundation for taking on Shakespeare’s language.
Read more → Warmup The physical, psychological, and emotional readiness each player brings — and builds — at the start of a session. Warmup games replace individual preoccupations with a shared group focus.
Read more →Alternative One — Scenes
A scene is a piece of a play that happens in a specific place at a specific time. It can involve one or more characters. Players learn one scene instead of a whole play — ten people doing a two-person scene opens a door to five different interpretations!
A brilliant and fun use of scenes: elementary school teachers in Colorado worked with the University of Colorado’s Will Power programme so that different classes in different schools each learned a different scene of the same play. Then, on a spring day, everyone came to CU’s Mary Rippon Theatre and performed their scene. The Players watched the other schools’ scenes in order and saw how their own scene fit into the storyline. (Will Power article pending)
A similar alternative is a “string of beads” — scenes strung together by narration that fills in the spaces between the chosen scenes. Some examples:
- Falstaff — telling the story of the character using scenes from the History plays and Merry Wives of Windsor.
- Romeo and Juliet scenes with narration filling in the story. The Nurse is a favored character as narrator.
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the scenes being the Lovers and/or the Mechanicals →
Alternative Two — Scenes Around a Theme
A theme is chosen from seemingly inexhaustible possibilities given the breadth and depth of Shakespeare’s plays. Scenes from various plays — and even language from the Sonnets — are woven together in a sequence that explores the theme. There might be an introduction and short “bridges” between scenes, but we find them unnecessary.
Scripts can be weighted with serious material or have a more humorous, riotous, even uproarious set of scenes. Shakespeare often strikes a balance with both in one play. Consider the audience who will be viewing the production.
Sometimes the arrangement of scenes is obvious; other times it takes careful exploration.
Experiment. Shakespeare did.
Themes we’ve worked with:
- Battle of the Sexes
- Magic and the Supernatural
- Fools and Fooling
- Ruler and the Ruled
- Rogues and Villains
- The Generation Gap
- Bullies (CU)
- Falstaff
We perform Scenes Around a Theme without narration. Changes in Players or an added hat or headscarf may indicate a different setting or a different play — but hints like this are not necessary. If knowing which play is desired, very short narrative pieces or an easel with signboards listing the play and scene will serve.
When you assemble scenes around a theme, you are working with a narrator function — a “string of beads” structure. Your audience sees a set of scenes that make a kind of sense together, a shape that doesn’t quite exist in Shakespeare’s own lexicon. That’s the trade-off you accept for the thematic depth this format offers.
Alternative Three — Cuttings
Cut the three-plus-hour play to forty minutes (or twenty). Here’s the method:
- Begin by recording how you and/or others tell the play to someone else in three minutes.
- Find and read through a summary of the play (available on various websites and in books).
- List the scenes you will use.
- Then — mercilessly cut the scenes internally. Create a story line that gives character opportunities to your Players.
Chuck Wilcox is providing plays he cut for use while teaching elementary grades at St. Mary’s Academy in Denver. More scripts are being prepared over time.
A cutting creates yet another reality that is not truly Shakespeare — whole sections of the play are left out. That’s the trade-off you accept for a forty-minute playable version that keeps the story intact.
Alternative Four — New Plays with a Shakespeare Foundation
It is possible to lift a play’s storyline, characters, and even dialogue into a different script. The themes are universal; the characters are archetypal. The language is modernized or adapted to a different dialect altogether. West Side Story — with music by Leonard Bernstein and book by Arthur Laurents — is the major example, transplanting Romeo and Juliet’s scaffolding into 1950s New York.
There are endless possibilities to take a play, or Shakespeare himself, and create a piece that provides both entertainment and exploratory knowledge.
A Shakespeare-inspired new play is Shakespeare-adjacent, not truly Shakespeare. When purists ask, we answer: yes, it walks in his footsteps, and it invites Players who a whole play might exclude.
Two DT:FC-family new plays:
- The Ballad of Three Finger Dick by Chuck Wilcox — set in the American Wild West, using the language and idiom of that time and place. Chuck’s story on Honoring Our Guides →
- Shakespeare’s Sister by Marta Barnard — written for two women. When a Player fell out the day before opening, Marta performed both roles solo — the two-woman script became a last-minute one-woman show, and stayed that way for the tour. Marta’s story on Honoring Our Guides →