UnRehearsed Shakespeare
The Bard UnLeashed!

UnRehearsed Shakespeare is new... and very, very old.

Actors in the 1500s performed in the open air, under natural light in an environment fraught with distractions: gambling, drinking, bear baiting, and prostitution. Theatre performances had to be entertaining and fast-paced to compete for the attention of audiences. 

For this reason, Shakespeare’s company presented a different play every day of the week (Sundays excluded) and never presented the same play more than twice in two weeks. So when did the company have time to rehearse? 

Short answer: They didn’t… except for fights, dances, and songs.

Actors were not given the full text of a script. There were no copyright laws, and nothing to keep an actor, unhappy with his role, from taking his copy of Hamlet to a competing theatre and selling it as his own creation. There also were no copy machines, and ink and paper were expensive. 

To save money, time, and energy — and to keep the scripts secure — actors received only the last few words of their cues, their own lines, entrances, exits, and essential stage directions that could not be conveyed through the lines of the other actors.

All of this was contained in a scroll, or “roll” — where the term “role” originated. 

How did actors know what to do on stage without rehearsals or access to the full script? Playwrights of the time understood the constraints, and wrote character clues into the cue script. Spelling, punctuation, language, and meter all contain direction for the actors; everything an actor needs to know about how to perform a role is right there in the scroll.

Brave souls that they are, our actors memorize their parts – their lines plus their three-to-five-word cues from the First Folio – and then show up to the theatre to fly with no director, no blocking, and no idea to whom they’re delivering their lines. Every performance is a unique, wild-and-wooly improvisation that will never be seen again.

UnRehearsed returns Shakespeare to its roots.