I’ve been sitting on this list for a bit (mostly because I… forgot I wrote it) but now, here it is! Note: These are all things I have seen in actual productions or done myself.
- Assume the characters love each other. The more they hate each other, the more fun this is!
- Move punctuation around to make new sentences. (There’s textual precedent for this! The Prologue to ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’- in Midsummer, yo- bases its humor on the actor speaking it having messed up his pauses. Also a lot of punctuation was added by editors later, so this one isn’t even a stretch.)
- Eliminate metatheatrical deception. Asides? Everyone on stage can hear them. Disguise? Everyone can see through it.
- Cut out famous soliloquies. I saw a production of Hamlet that cut ‘To be or not to be.’ It was EXCELLENT. Corollary 4a: Leave in the bits that always get cut.
- Kill somebody who the script leaves alive. In that same Hamlet, Horatio drank the rest of the poison and died after delivering his final speech.
- Introduce a physical plot point without changing the text. The Shakespeare Theatre in DC did a King Lear where Cordelia was played by a deaf actor, and the Fool was her interpreter. (I also saw a Much Ado in which the actor who played Beatrice was pregnant in real life. The production didn’t really acknowledge that, but it would have been so interesting if they had!)
- Make it a musical! Keep the text, put songs in it. Or just set the text to music. Or, if there are songs in it already, replace them with modern ones- not a Shakespeare example, but I’ve seen a couple versions of Knight of the Burning Pestle that did this.
- Fuck genres. Play tragedies for laughs. Make comedies disturbing.
- What if the characters know they’re characters in a play? What if just one of them does? Shakespeare uses enough theatrical language that you can really have fun with this.
I will probably add more to this list, or make a second one of things I haven’t seen (or done!) but would really like to. If you’ve seen or done anything else fun and unusual, reblog and add it! I’d love to know about it!
“play tragedies for laughs” ROMEO AND JULIET WAS MEANT TO BE PLAYED FOR LAUGHS. PLEASE DO THIS
