Author: iambic315

This was our most extensive summer season, and we served almost double the number of kids as we had previously. Due to construction at the Lyric, all sessions were held at Fais Do Do, enabling us to achieve something we’d wanted for a long time – the union of our two troupes.

Our second Young Playwrights Festival was a huge success. A company of actors, including LA professionals and several of our teens, performed twelve world premieres.

Our first of three Shakespeare Intensives explored and expanded on the phrase, “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.”

The second Shakespeare Intensive focused on Conflict – discovering famous adversaries like Mistress Quickly and Falstaff, Mercutio and Tybalt, Ajax and Thersites, and more.

Our older students went “Beyond Shakespeare,” exploring playwrights like Moliere, Kyd, Suzan-Lori Parks, Federico García Lorca and Arthur Miller.

In Knighthood and Chivalry, our Knights learned Renaissance dances, stage combat, and created Orders committed to making positive change in the world.

We closed with the last Intensive – Shakespeare and the Greeks – where we explored mythology used in Shakespeare’s plays, and performed not only Shakespeare scenes, but an original piece based on the words of the Greek philosopher Epicurus.

We opened with The Winter’s Tale, performed by our older students. The production traveled from a chilly Sicily, with characters dressed in white and gold, to a riotously colorful Bohemia.

At Fais Do Do, the season opened with Comedy of Errors. Two identical twins and their two servants (also identical twins) are separated in a ship-wreck. When, years later, they all show up in the same town, mistaken identities abound.

Back at the Lyric, we performed The Tempest (our third production!) In this production, our “Prospera” was female, adding interesting nuances to her relationship with Miranda, and with the Neapolitans who usurped her throne. We also gave Sycorax, Caliban’s mother, a voice, and she haunted the island with her laments and plotting.

We closed with Pericles at Fais Do Do. Performed primarily in the round, with all the costume changes taking place in full view of the audience, the Players cplayed multiple roles, and created storms at sea, a joust, and multiple shipwrecks

Fall 2015 saw the premiere of our second original script – and the second entry in Blaire Baron Larsen’s Spoken trilogy. Unspoken: Shakespeare’s Personae in Peril placed several of Shakespeare’s smaller, often cut characters in a mythical Green Room, pestering their harried Stage Manager to learn whether they would be going on in any of the hundreds of Shakespeare productions happening across the world. Frequently interrupted by an angry Lady Macbeth, they discover that there are plans afoot to cut them permanently, as the works of Shakespeare are deemed too long and too complex for modern audiences. Unspoken speaks out against this attitude, and reiterates the importance and the magic of Shakespeare and live theater.

At Fais Do Do, our Shakespeare in the City Players presented Midsummer Night’s Dream. As the Runaways left the repressive Court, they found themselves in a 1960s “flower child” paradise, where tie-dye clad fairies made mischief, and the Rude Mechanicals rehearsed.