Griffin initially wanted to bring to the United States eventually arrived in 2015 and now plays weekly in Boston Austin, Tex. Meanwhile, the beyond-drunk Shakespeare production that Mr. His Brass Jar Productions presented “Trainspotting Live” in the same building last year, which he estimates lost about $300,000. Griffin acknowledged that the formula doesn’t always work. “If you have a big room with only a few people in it, that doesn’t work.”ĭespite the show’s success, Mr. “There’s a laugh track that has to happen for you to enjoy ‘Drunk Shakespeare,’” Mr. Major costs include construction, a 10-year lease and the expenses associated with having a liquor license (which the production company itself will hold in Chicago).Įxpanding the show to other cities, rather than to bigger spaces, is the goal. For that production, capitalized at $1 million, the team turned an old fast-food restaurant into a space with a false locksmith’s shop facade and a speakeasy vibe inside. “Drunk Shakespeare” began performances in Chicago on May 2. A pair of crowns, worn by audience members, were once crafted by an artisan, but have had to be replaced so many times that one of them is now a more budget-conscious cake tin. There are dry cleaning or replacement expenditures if a patron’s clothes or accessories get damaged because of spills or, as happened, an audience member vomiting in another’s designer purse.Īdditionally, drunk people tend to steal. “Drunk Shakespeare” doesn’t have a formal budget, but there would be some unusual line items if it did. Our drunk actors are on a regular rotation system and are carefully monitored at all times.” And the website warns: “We do not condone excessive drinking. The actors in it don’t typically drink socially anymore. No one at Drunk Shakespeare wants you to worry about an actor’s health (or destroy yours). “They put pita in it and I want to lie and say I’m gluten-free, but then I remember the Domino’s I ate last night onstage.” Taylor, following a doubleheader drinking and performing as Lady Macbeth. show, the same actor drinks at both performances. One actor - never the narrator - does at least five shots of his or her choosing and drinks the witches’ concoction to get things going. The actors incorporated the grandmother’s name into the show.ĭrinking is not part of the audition process, nor is it rehearsed. Mariah Parris, another cast member, spoke about three women who were there to honor their recently deceased grandmother, who dreamed of coming to New York. Along with the radically abbreviated “Macbeth,” the performers arrive with scripted bits of humor, and room is left for improvisation.īecause there is audience interaction, the five-person ensemble comes to suss out the room before the performance begins, getting a sense of how people look, who could be teased, and who might go along with being touched or brought physically into the action.Īubrey Taylor remembered a fellow actor playing Macbeth reaching into a woman’s bag to get a prop and finding purchases from the Museum of Sex. “Drunk Shakespeare” offers an atmosphere of raunchy chaos that turns out to be carefully ordered. Instead he approached David Hudson of Three Day Hangover, a company that already presented classic plays in bars, about creating their own soused Shakespeare. Scott Griffin, an Australian tech entrepreneur, saw a show called “_ Shakespeare” at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and wanted to present it in New York, but couldn’t secure the rights. In fact, another stage show of this ilk got the ball rolling (and is now a competitor of sorts). It might seem as if “Drunk Shakespeare” were inspired by “Drunk History” - a 2007 web series turned Comedy Central mainstay that features a tipsy narrator retelling a historical event as actors lip sync his tale. After a bumpy start, the show has earned such strong word of mouth that producers this month refurbished an old fast-food restaurant to open a Chicago edition. Something like that is the formula behind “Drunk Shakespeare,” which over the last five years has become an unlikely Off Off Broadway hit. Add a prop dildo, an interpretive dance break and the president’s rousing speech from “Independence Day.” For the witches’ brew, stir together samples from the plentiful cocktails poured for audience members. Imagine “Macbeth,” but with a five-person cast that includes an inebriated actor in the title role.
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