Shakespeare in LA

It’s Showtime!

Hi Everyone,

Yes it’s been a while.

Post-pandemic, I’ve gotten requests for local Shakespeare information again so I’ve decided to bring Shakespeare in LA back from archive status. While I won’t be reviewing productions for now, I will be updating the show listings on an ongoing basis. You’ll find them in the column on the right under On Stage in 2023 and also on the Calendar page. I will most likely also post periodic updates for what’s happening around town but they won’t be regular.

For now, I hope you’ve been well and are finding the best way to live your best life. When in doubt, go see a show!

Ellen Dostal
Shakespeare in LA

The Antaeus Company is offering Shakespeare, a fourteen week class moderated by Armin Shimerman. Shakespeare’s text is a gift to the actor who knows how to find the offered clues to performance. In this class, Shimerman will lead an exploration of the text’s structure and rhetorical devices. Students will learn to extract information on character and interpretation from the text, always within the context of Elizabethan daily life, beliefs and biases. The class will focus first on monologues, and then progress to scene work. The ultimate goal is to prepare an actor for ANY classical text. If you have a fear of Shakespeare, Armin will cure you of it.

Dates: 14 week session begins February 10, 2015. Tuesdays 1:00 – 5:00 pm
Class fee: $630 ($575 early bird discount if you register by 1/30/15)
Class size: 14-16. Open to actors of all ages.
Click Here for more information.

Theatricum Botanicum has had two spaces open up in their Winter Intensive Shakespeare Seminar for adults. Three weekends of Elizabethan Life and Dance, Fencing, Voice, Rhetoric, Text Analysis, Alexander Technique, Movement and Monologue work. Click Here for more information.

Registration is also open for Theatricum’s Youth Academy Classes. Click Here for information or call (310) 455-2322 to enroll.

TEEN SESSION:
Shakespeare Monologue Workout – TEENS ONLY
Date: Saturday, February 7, 2015 (10:00 am – 2:00 pm)

YOUTH SESSION:
Fencing & Stage Combat – GRADES 4-8
Saturday, February 7, 2015 (1:00 – 4:00 pm)

And over at A Noise Within, Deborah Strang will be teaching Acting Shakespeare: Scenes and Monologues. This special eight week course will begin with an in-depth exploration of Shakespeare’s scenes and monologues. Students will read and discuss The Bard and then choose specific monologues and scenes to perform. The class allows participants to incorporate physicalization of their character, and to spur a connection to key emotions that enliven their performance. Limited enrollment subject to instructor approval, ages 18 and up.

Dates: March 23 – May 11, 2015. Mondays 7:00 – 10:00 pm
Tuition: $360. Click Here for more information.

This one is compliments of Mya Gosling of Peace, Good Tickle-Brain. Her eclectic collection of mostly Shakespeare-related comics plus a few other kinds of stick figure cartoons is great. Thank you LA-based actor Karen Zumsteg for sending it my way! (You’ll love it, especially if you are also a fan of Sondheim’s Into the Woods).

What does “Good Tickle Brain” mean? Mya says, “It’s part of a quote from Shakespeare’s Henry IV, part 1, one of my favorite plays. I always thought it was a fantastically charming insult, and have thus appropriated it for my own nefarious purposes. Shakespeare won’t mind. He’s been appropriated before.”

Yes, he certainly has. For more of her fun cartoons and Parts 2,  3 & 4 of Into the (Shakespearean) Woods, visit http://goodticklebrain.com/

[Production Update: As of 10/22/14, this production has been cancelled.] Three of L.A.’s most venerable artistic directors come together when Odyssey Theatre Ensemble (Ron Sossi, artistic director) and The New American Theatre (Jack Stehlin, artistic director) present a bold new production of Shakespeare’s Othello, directed by Rogue Machine artistic director John Perrin Flynn. The modern dress production, starring Stehlin as Iago opposite A Martinez in the title role, opens October 17  at the Odyssey Theatre in West L.A.

Tragic events are set in motion when Othello, commander of the Venetian army, makes the handsome and charismatic Cassio his lieutenant, bypassing his ensign Iago for promotion. Consumed by envy, his resentment fueled by his knowledge that Cassio has never seen battle, Iago plots his revenge. In this riveting psychological drama, we see how social order, racial politics and the stress of a soldier’s life combine to push Iago over the edge, as he coldly calculates the destruction of Othello and Othello’s young wife Desdemona.  More

Hello Everyone! We are very close in the LA2050 Grant competition and if we win the popular vote, Los Angeles Drama Club, the country’s youngest Shakespeare Troupe will get its own theater in Los Angeles. We are up against giants in the non-profit world however we are 8th out of 59 and the only performing arts non-profit in the entire contest! Can you help us reach our goal? If so, please Click Here to vote. Thank you!

Also our FREE Shakespeare class for children ages 7-10 begins Saturday, September 13 and continues for 12 weeks, 3:00 – 4:00 pm at the Baldwin Hills Library. For more information visit www.losangelesdramaclub.com.