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    A Midsummer Night's Dream: The 30-Minute Shakespeare
    A Midsummer Night's Dream: The 30-Minute Shakespeare
    A Midsummer Night's Dream: The 30-Minute Shakespeare
    Ebook93 pages49 minutes

    A Midsummer Night's Dream: The 30-Minute Shakespeare

    By William Shakespeare

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    About this ebook

    Planning a school or amateur Shakespeare production? The best way to experience the plays is to perform them, but getting started can be a challenge: The complete plays are too long and complex, while scene selections or simplified language are too limited.

    "The 30-Minute Shakespeare" is a new series of abridgements that tell the story” of each play from start to finish while keeping the beauty of Shakespeare’s language intact. Specific stage directions and character suggestions give even inexperienced actors the tools to perform Shakespeare with confidence, understanding, and fun!

    This cutting focuses on three ridiculously funny and vibrant scenes from A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. The first scene starts with Puck mistakenly anointing the eyes of the wrong lovers with love potion, leading to a madcap chase scene between Helena, Lysander, Hermia, and Demetrius. Scene two features Bottom's magical transformation to an ass, always an audience favorite. The final scene is the classic play within a play, where the "Rude Mechanicals" act out with "tragical mirth" the story of Pyramus and Thisbe, with specific comic suggestions for the characters, including Lion chasing Thisbe into the audience!

    The edition also includes an essay by editor Nick Newlin on how to produce a Shakespeare play with novice actors, and notes about the original production of this abridgement at the Folger Shakespeare Library's annual Student Shakespeare Festival.



    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNicolo Whimsey Press
    Release dateMay 1, 2010
    ISBN9781935550129
    A Midsummer Night's Dream: The 30-Minute Shakespeare
    Author

    William Shakespeare

    William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest playwright the world has seen. He produced an astonishing amount of work; 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and 5 poems. He died on 23rd April 1616, aged 52, and was buried in the Holy Trinity Church, Stratford.

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      Book preview

      A Midsummer Night's Dream - Nick Newlin

      001

      Table of Contents

      THE 30-MINUTE SHAKESPEARE

      Title Page

      Dedication

      Acknowledgements

      NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY

      CHARACTERS IN THE PLAY

      SCENE 1 (ACT III, SCENE II).

      SCENE 2 (ACT IV, SCENE I)

      SCENE 3 (ACT V, SCENE I)

      PERFORMING SHAKESPEARE

      PERFORMANCE NOTES: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

      A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM: SET AND PROP LIST

      BENJAMIN BANNEKER ACADEMIC HIGH SCHOOL presents

      ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

      THE 30-MINUTE SHAKESPEARE

      Copyright Page

      THE 30-MINUTE SHAKESPEARE

      A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

      001

      "Nick Newlin’s work as a teaching artist for Folger Education during the past thirteen years has provided students, regardless of their experience with Shakespeare or being on stage, a unique opportunity to tread the boards at the Folger Theatre. Working with students to edit Shakespeare’s plays for performance at the annual Folger Shakespeare Festivals has enabled students to gain new insights into the Bard’s plays, build their skills of comprehension and critical reading, and just plain have fun working collaboratively with their peers.

      Folger Education promotes performance-based teaching of Shakespeare’s plays, providing students with an interactive approach to Shakespeare’s plays in which they participate in a close reading of the text through intellectual, physical, and vocal engagement. Newlin’s The 30-Minute Shakespeare series is an invaluable resource for teachers of Shakespeare, and for all who are interested in performing the plays."

      ROBERT YOUNG, PH.D.

      DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION

      FOLGER SHAKESPEARE LIBRARY

      002

      To my Mom,

      Louisa Newlin

      Thanks for the

      inspiration and support.

      Special thanks to Joanne Flynn, Bill Newlin, Eliza Newlin Carney, William and Louisa Newlin, Michael Tolaydo, Hilary Kacser, Sarah Juckniess, Katherine Little, Eva Zimmerman, Julie Schaper and all of Consortium, Leo Bowman and the students, faculty, and staff at Banneker Academic High School, and Robert Young PhD and the Folger Shakespeare Library, especially the wonderful Education Department.

      NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY

      I was not a big actor type in high school, so if you weren’t either, or if the young people you work with are not, then this book is for you. Whether or not you work with actor types, you can use this book to stage a lively and captivating thirty-minute version of a Shakespeare play. No experience is necessary.

      When I was about eleven years old, my parents took me to see Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona, which was being performed as a Broadway musical. I didn’t comprehend every word I heard, but I was enthralled with the language, the characters, and the story, and I understood enough of it to follow along. From then on, I associated Shakespeare with fun.

      Of course Shakespeare is fun. The Elizabethan audiences knew it, which is one reason he was so popular. It didn’t matter that some of the language eluded them. The characters were passionate and vibrant, and their conflicts were compelling. Young people study Shakespeare in high school, but more often than not they read his work like a text book and then get quizzed on academic elements of the play, such as plot, theme, and vocabulary. These are all very interesting, but not nearly as interesting as standing up and performing a scene! It is through performance that the play comes alive and all its academic elements are revealed. There is nothing more satisfying to a student or teacher than the feeling of owning a Shakespeare play, and that can only come from performing it.

      But Shakespeare’s plays are often two or more hours long, making the performance of an entire play almost out of the question. One can perform a single scene, which is certainly a good start, but what about the story? What about the changes a character goes through as the play progresses? When school groups perform one scene unedited, or when they lump several plays together, the audience can get lost. This is why I have always preferred to tell the story of the play.

      The 30-Minute Shakespeare gives students and teachers a chance to get up on their feet and act out a Shakespeare play in half an hour, using his language. The emphasis is on key scenes, with narrative bridges between scenes to keep the audience caught up on the action. The stage directions are built into this script so that young actors do not have to stand in one place; they can move and tell the story with their actions as well as their words. And it can all be done in a classroom during class time!

      That

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