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As a long-time hockey fan, I always told my confused friends that I could explain all the key points of the game with three straws plus a set of salt and pepper shakers. That may have sounded crazy, but it was pure amateur hour when compared to Forced Entertainment’s ambitious program of presenting Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare. They adapted all 36 plays into multiple evenings of theatre which Forced Entertainment performed at Royce Hall in 2016. Now they are going online with Table Top Shakespeare: At Home which is being performed live over nine weeks beginning September 17th. It is being presented locally by CAP UCLA.
What does that mean? You can watch condensed versions of all of Shakespeare’s plays performed live from Sheffield, London and Berlin by actors using a table in their kitchen, bedroom or living room and the various objects they have at hand. Take a look at the teaser for Table Top Shakespeare: At Home to get a better sense of what they are doing.
Forced Entertainment has been entertaining audiences with their unique presentation of plays like Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and more for five years. In fact Table Top Shakespeare has been performed around the world. What seems absurd (and it probably is at times) seems to be a truly audience-friendly approach to these plays.
Lauren Collins-Hughes, writing in the New York Times, said of Table Top Shakespeare:
“There is something of the nursery in the show’s insistence on unfettered imagination, and something of the bedtime story in the way the best of these tales unfold. They’re not soporific but soothingly mesmeric, even the tragic ones.”
Performances take place Thursday-Sunday at 3:00 PM EDT/12:00 PM PDT for the next nine weeks. There is no charge to watch the performances, but you do need to register in advance to see them. Go here to register.
At the conclusion of each Sunday performance is a post-show Q&A. To attend that Q&A you need to email feaftertalks@gmail.com.
Here’s the schedule:
Week 1:
September 17th: Macbeth (can you now not say that play’s title in the kitchen?)
September 18th: Pericles
September 19th: The Merchant of Venice
September 20th: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Week 2:
September 24th: Romeo and Juliet
September 25th: King John
September 26th: Titus Andronicus
September 27th: Much Ado About Nothing
Week 3:
October 1st: Hamlet
October 2nd: Love’s Labour’s Lost
October 3rd: The Winter’s Tale
October 4th: All’s Well That Ends Well
Week 4:
October 8th: Richard II
October 9th: Henry IV, Part 1
October 10th: Henry IV, Part 2
October 11th: Henry V
Week 5:
October 15th: Henry VI, Part 1
October 16th: Henry VI, Part 2
October 17th: Henry VI, Part 3
October 18th: Richard III
Week 6:
October 22nd: Measure for Measure
October 23rd: Coriolanus
October 24th: The Merry Wives of Windsor
October 25th: King Lear
Week 7:
October 29th: Twelfth Night
October 30th: Cymbeline
October 31st: Julius Caesar
November 1st: Antony and Cleopatra
Week 8:
November 5th: Two Gentlemen of Verona
November 6th: Troilus and Cressida
November 7th: As You Like It
November 8th: Othello
Week 9:
November 12th: Taming of the Shrew
November 13th: The Comedy of Errors
November 14th: Timon of Athens
November 15th: The Tempest
If “All the world’s a stage,” Table Top Shakespeare: At Home proves that you don’t have to have men and women as its players. Apparently straws and a set of salt and pepper shakers will do just fine.
Photo: Table Top Shakespeare: At Home – Henry V (Photo courtesy CAP UCLA)