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Exploring Shakespeare's Modern Adaptations

The Reduced Shakespeare Company is an American acting troupe known for parodying Shakespeare's plays through improvisation and having them performed by only three actors in highly abbreviated forms. Their signature performance is The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) which condenses all of Shakespeare's plays into a single show through techniques like merging plays together and performing them at different speeds. Last Lear is a 2007 Bollywood film starring Amitabh Bachchan as a retired Shakespearean actor disillusioned by the rise of cinema over live theater. Looking for Richard is a 1996 documentary by Al Pacino that acts out scenes from Richard III while also examining Shakespeare's continuing relevance through interviews with ordinary people and scholars.

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104 views2 pages

Exploring Shakespeare's Modern Adaptations

The Reduced Shakespeare Company is an American acting troupe known for parodying Shakespeare's plays through improvisation and having them performed by only three actors in highly abbreviated forms. Their signature performance is The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) which condenses all of Shakespeare's plays into a single show through techniques like merging plays together and performing them at different speeds. Last Lear is a 2007 Bollywood film starring Amitabh Bachchan as a retired Shakespearean actor disillusioned by the rise of cinema over live theater. Looking for Richard is a 1996 documentary by Al Pacino that acts out scenes from Richard III while also examining Shakespeare's continuing relevance through interviews with ordinary people and scholars.

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The Reduced Shakespeare Company is an American acting troupe founded in 1981.

They
are known for their humorous style and improvisations. In 1987 they created a play called The
Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), in which they parody Shakespeare's plays
by having them shortened or merged and preformed by three actors.

The fourth wall doesn't exist and the actors address the audience directly and sometimes
have the audience participate in the play. Because of their improvisations and pop culture
references, they deviate from the script and the performances differ, even with the same cast.

They start with the parody of Romeo and Juliet, then Titus Andronicus as a cooking show,
Othello as a rap song, they perform very shortened versions of Macbeth, Julius Cesar and
Anthony and Cleopatra. All 16 comedies that Shakespeare wrote are combined into one, as
they claim they are all the same and that Shakespeare was a formula writer and reused many
of the same elements in his comedies. All the histories are performed as a football match
with the crown as the football. They end their performance with Hamlet with a lot of
audience participation - someone from the audience plays Ophelia in the Nunnery scene and
the rest of the audience serve as her id, ego and superego. They perform Hamlet couple of
times more at different speeds and end it with performing it backwards.

Last Lear (2007) is a Bollywood movie with Amitabh Bachchan in the main role as a retired
Shakespearean theatre actor in the wake of the rise of Bollywood and the fall of stage
production. Bachchan is immensely passionate about Shakespeare, knows all the plays as he
has lived them by performing them for decades, he also believes nothing of such value could
ever be written again and that the theatre is art and is worth more than the cinema. The
character is a traditionalist just like Lear is in the play; he dislikes anyone who doesn't know
Shakespeare's works.

This movie can be seen as an attempt at the revival of Shakespearean text in the 21st century
in the midst of cinematic mass production of Bollywood. The character of Bachchan expresses
the flaws of cinema of not being able to see all things at once, something is always in focus
while other things are dimmed, unfocused. Cinema offers frozen moments while the stage
offers ongoing moments, it's a living organism. Theatre is about movement, action, words,
interaction with the audience, the impression you make on people without crazy special
effects. It is also a call for more art that truly captures feelings and humanity.
Looking for Richard (1996) is a documentary film directed by Al Pacino in which Al Pacino
and other actors act out the scenes from Shakespeare's play Richard III, but also comment on
their roles. It is a project of demystifying Shakespeare through deconstruction. The
documentary is more about how Al Pacino would produce Shakespeare, it is also an
examination on the role and relevance of Shakespeare in modern day. It includes interviews
with ordinary people as well as with actors that are known for their performances in
Shakespeare's plays. The main question becomes how do you revive Shakespeare?

The intended audience are ordinary people that are not that familiar with Shakespeare's
works or are not interested in them. Pacino's intention is to present Shakespeare as our
contemporary, someone whose works hold truth and meaning and can influence and move
us even today.

Performative nature of Shakespeare is emphasized through interviews with actors and


scholars who criticize preserving Shakespeare only in the academic circles and debates.

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