Acting and Directing Shakespeare’s Comedies: Key Lessons outlines a clear, effective process for acting Shakespeare’s comedies. This book lays out core principles and useful exercises that help the reader better understand, expereince, and implement Shakespeare's comedic design. Building off of modern acting methods as well as contemporary Clown, classical Commedia, and verse-speaking techniques, the author guides the reader toward interpretive and performance choices that are original, justified, and entertaining. Included are clear examples and detailed case studies that illuminate and reenforce these key lessons. This accessible book is for actors, directors, students of Shakespeare, and those who want a fuller, richer awareness of the possibilities within Shakespeare’s comedies and a clear, pragmatic process for creating those performances.

Analysing why we laugh and what we laugh at, and describing how performers can elicit this response from their audience, this book enables actors to create memorable – and hilarious – performances. Rooted in performance and performance criticism, Sidney Homan and Brian Rhinehart provide a detailed explanation of how comedy works, along with advice on how to communicate comedy from the point of view of both the performer and the audience. Combining theory and performance, the authors analyse a variety of plays, both modern and classic. Playwrights featured include Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Christopher Durang, and Michael Frayn. Acting in Shakespeare's comedies is also covered in depth.

The One-Hour Shakespeare series is a collection of abridged versions of Shakespeare’s plays, designed specifically to accommodate both small and large casts. This volume, The Comedies, includes the following plays: As You Like It Love’s Labour’s Lost Much Ado About Nothing Twelfth Night These accessible and versatile scripts are supported by: an introduction with emphasis on the evolution of the series and the creative process of editing; the One-Hour projects in performance, a chapter on implementing money-saving ideas and suggestions for production whether in or outside a classroom setting; specific lesson plans to incorporate these projects successfully into an academic course; and cross-gender casting suggestions. These supplementary materials make the plays valuable not only for actors, directors and professors, but for any environment, cast or purpose. Ideal for both academics and professionals, One-Hour Shakespeare is the perfect companion to teaching and staging the most universally read and performed playwright in history.

"This is exactly the kind of work, with its synthesis of theory, close reading, and deconstructive performance criticism that many of us in the profession have been looking for." -- Joel B. Altman, University of California, Berkeley "McCandless's book represents an inventive and illuminating account that not only produces a theoretically activated text but also explores a range of options for staging it, turning theoretical into theatrical meanings." -- Barbara Hodgdon, Drake University "The writing is clear, snappy, wonderfully informed with a vivid and experienced theatrical imagination... a book that taught me a good deal about the problem comedies, especially from the vantage point of performance, though the insights into performance are fully and incisively integrated with, and they richly illuminate, formal, thematic, and psychological vantage points on the play." -- Richard P. Wheeler, University of Illinois Composed at a critical moment in English history, All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, and Troilus and Cressida -- Shakespeare's problem plays -- dramatize a crisis in the sex-gender system. They register a male dread of emasculation and engulfment, a fear of female authority and sexuality. In these plays males identify desire for a female as dangerous and unmanly, females contend and confound traditional femininity. David McCandless's book is a unique and invigorating example of performance criticism that illuminates these difficult, sometimes-overlooked tragicomedies. It is an original and timely contribution to Shakespearean theater scholarship.

Some day it’s going to happen: You’re going to find yourself on stage, wearing tights, and saying things in iambic pentameter. Face it, you’re in a Shakespeare play, and that means it’s a pretty good bet you’re going to DIE. The Bard is out for blood, but this play is here to stop him! How could Romeo and Juliet survive? Julius Caesar? A nameless soldier in Henry the Fifth? What if King Lear had an emotional support llama and didn’t need to make terrible mistakes? Join us in discovering how a dozen of Shakespeare’s plays could’ve turned out differently! If only they listened… (If you loved 10 Ways to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse, read this guide immediately.) New VIRTUAL VERSION of the play now available. Comedy One-act. 30-60 minutes (Length of the play: This show is approximately one hour long. To cut it into a shorter one-act, simply remove one or more of the sections.) 10-50+ actors, gender flexible

Shakespeare's Comedies of Love is a tribute to Alexander Leggatt, a critic who has shaped the way the world understands Shakespeare and his comedies.