What I did and why.

As a young actor working in a world class company at Stratford, Canada almost 50 years ago, I was fortunate to be in many brilliantly abridged Shakespearean productions of great clarity and complexity. The actors and directors all encouraged me to invent my text, fresh-mint it in the moment for whatever reason the scene would imply or demand. All of the great productions that I was in were brilliantly cut - Brian Bedford’s Titus Andronicus being the best. Why speak words no one was going to understand? Why stop the action of the play? Why stop the audience from thinking? Why lose them with obscurity? I then coached perhaps 1000 actor/students in their Shakespearean monologues over twenty years.

Anyway, each play took about 2 months to cut, put back on the page and note. Many, many decisions were debated at length. At times it was agony. I’d have to switch between plays for relief. I wanted bright teenagers to have a chance. I did not want the scripts dumb or dense. The R&J, for instance, and the accompanying guide, were very specifically created for what I thought grade nines could handle. I knew some of the plays so well they virtually cut themselves. I knew how they all should sound, so placing the words on the page as they might be thought, became second-nature. Besides I have never bought the rhythm nonsense of verse. One can’t invent rhythm; it mainly bullies one along. Check out my monologues! When I act them I have no idea if they are verse or prose, just invented thought.

So two years of daily slog and endless readings with Keith and we had 12 plays ready. I sold them in Ontario for a few years, hauling them from my printer to schools in my Van. Almost every school had a few keeners, and a few linguistic preeners. I fought on. I eventually moved to Vancouver, built the website and set the whole series free. For 40,000 play-downloads over ten years, I received 3 thank-you emails and not one donation. Ah well, the teachers needed the texts even if they barely understood how they should be employed. They hadn’t sat beside Peter Ustinov for two summers; they had certainly never played solid Shakespearean roles with fine companies to large audiences. I needed more patience - teenagers were still suffering.

I grew impatient with teachers last year and monetized the texts for a while. Teachers bought recordings, occasional guides and performance fees, and of course visited all the free resources and You Tube speeches, but almost never purchased the texts. The teachers were creating no new memories, but patchwork programmes of dread.

I was a terrible taskmaster as a single parent. My son, especially, learned and perfected many speeches under my guidance. As a software engineer for Microsoft, at 27, he defended a $115,000,000 lawsuit for them. All that practice made him an astonishing oral communicator, but that is what we did in the car, to and from school - speeches.

You see, I believe that a father-caveman would first teach his son how to cut, harden-in-the-fire and shape good spears. His son, of course, would be a hunter. I suggest, the survival tools of today are words. Sons and daughters need vocabulary and syntax in their quivers, and practice in their usages.

The 12 plays seek to teach students some of our best stories, while practicing our most creative language. The free resources and multitudinous recordings provide a wealth of performing and cultural background. I created Shakespeare Out Loud to interest teenagers, but also to teach teachers. These plays are not literature or poetry, they are drama; flesh and blood drama!

I’ve done all the work; I invite you now to play.