Plays with the word “Shakespeare” in the title typically scare students away, but the acting students in Elon University’s theatre honor society, Alpha Psi Omega, put a humorous spin on the classic Shakespeare plays with “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged).”
“It’s one of the funniest shows I’ve ever done,” said Sean Liang, a senior BFA acting major. “And it’s a very non-traditional theatre show.”
APO produced the play with senior Andrew Ontiveros as director. Liang, senior Matt Summers and sophomore Ryan Cooper were actors and took on various roles throughout the show. Many of the performers played several roles and switched characters quickly backstage.
“The biggest difficulty in producing this show was making sure each of Shakespeare’s plays were clear,” Ontiveros said. “Of course we make fun of each of them, but if we didn’t focus on what each play was, then how were we able to parody them?”
The show is a parody of all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays and combines them in a 97-minute show. The first act covered 36 different plays and the second focused on an abridged version of “Hamlet.”
“The actors did a great job of defining each play and each role they played, which was really helpful in telling the overall story,” Ontiveros said.
Whether it’s a comedy, history or tragedy, the actors kept the audience laughing. Liang and Summers have studied improv together for the past four years.
“We wanted the audience to forget the ‘horror’ stories of a literature class and approach Shakespeare from a new perspective that is interesting to them,” Ontiveros said.
Though there were many plays to cover, it was a fairly simple show with no set and no more than three actors at any given time. For this show, the audience wasn’t completely separated from the actors on stage. It was a conversational show, mixing improvisation and traditional acting.
“My favorite part is the audience participation section in Act II,” Ontiveros said. “The actors attempt to analyze Ophelia from ‘Hamlet’ by dividing the audience into her id, ego and superego. This is just a really fun section because the actors get to play with the audience and get to ad-lib and improv, which makes each performance unique to that night.”