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 just 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. I received lots of scepticism from many talent-challenged twerps, downright backstabbing at times. 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 great classical parts with fine companies to large audiences. I needed more patience - teenagers were still suffering.

I got mad last year and monetized the texts for a while. Teachers bought recordings, occasional guides and performance fees, and of course visited all the resources and speeches, but almost never purchased the texts. The teachers were creating no memories just tales of dread with patchwork programmes.

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 eventually defended a $125,000,000 lawsuit for them. All that practice made him an astonishing oral communicator, but that is what we did in the car, to and back 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. He needed them to survive. If parents today ensure their kids can speak well, they are likely to prosper as well.

The vast resources of this website are your gift to teach students some of our best stories and most creative language. Call me arrogant, but this series WORKS, and the resources all the knowledge any teacher of Shakespeare would need. I call most of rest blah, blah, blah.
You can do better teachers with this series! The scripts work; can you play?