Reduced Shakespeare Company

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The Reduced Shakespeare Company is a troupe that performs unsubtle, fast-paced, seemingly improvisational condensations of huge topics.

The Company was founded in 1981 by Daniel Singer, who wrote a 25-minute, 4-actor version of "Hamlet" to be performed at the original Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Novato, California. He cast himself as Polonius, Horatio, and Laertes; Jess Borgeson as the title character; Michael Fleming as Bernardo, Claudius, and the Ghost of Hamlet's father; and Barbara Reinertson as Ophelia and Gertrude. When Miss Reinertson broke her ankle three weeks into the run, Borgeson suggested that school-chum Adam Long fill in for her in drag. A wig was procured, and Long's performance was described as "uncanny." The show won high praise and developed a huge, cultish following.

In 1983, Borgeson returned to college to get a degree in English literature, leaving Singer and Long to continue under the RSC banner. They penned a twenty-minute version of Romeo and Juliet, which the duo performed with great success, not only at Renaissance Fairs, but on street-corners, beaches, and at private events. Crowds were amazed to see two men arrive with a small basket of costumes, two fencing foils, two bottles of poison, a rose, a dagger, a wig and a dummy, and proceed to enact the entire story with the zany style of a Marx Brothers movie. Taking the advice of some fellow street-performers, Long and Singer expanded the comedy in the act and solicited for tips afterwards. Change and small bills poured into their hats. The show was a sensation, and the troupe's popularity continued to grow.

Borgeson rejoined the troupe in 1985, adding Hamlet back into the repertoire. Several actors had come and gone in the roles of Bernardo, the Ghost, and Claudius; the last in the series excused himself when his daughter was born. The three-man RSC was born that same day, with Long taking over those roles. In 1987, a friend of the company suggested that they'd find a welcome reception at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. The ideal show length being about an hour, they decided they needed about twenty more minutes of material, and crazily proposed doing Shakespeare's other 35 plays to round out an abridgement of everything the bard wrote in less than one hour. The boys attacked the project with gusto.

The resulting script successfully premiered in an open-framed barn at the Paramount Ranch in Agoura, adjacent to the site of the Renaissance Faire. Winning over audiences in Edinburgh, however, would be quite a different matter. Squeezed into a church basement at 10:30 a.m., the show played to delighted audiences, and after three days, all tickets to the three-week run were snapped up when the overwhelmingly positive reviews hit the street. The now-legendary show, expanded to a full 97 minutes, proceeded to tour theaters and festivals around the world. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) ran for nine record-breaking years at the Criterion Theatre in London's West End. It has become one of the world's most popular shows, playing frequently in a variety of languages. A video version was released on DVD in 2001.

Singer left the Company in 1989 and was replaced by Reed Martin; Borgeson left in 1992 and was replaced by Austin Tichenor. Long has also retired from the company. In 1994 Tichenor, Long and Martin created a six-part radio series called The Reduced Shakespeare Radio Show. It was broadcast on the BBC World Service from May 11 to June 22, 1994. The same year they produced The Ring Reduced, a half hour version of the Ring Cycle, as part of Channel 4's Wagner season.

The company's later plays include All the Great Books (abridged), The Complete History of America (abridged), The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged), The Complete Millennium Musical (abridged) and Completely Hollywood (abridged).

In 1995, the RSC recorded The Reduced Shakespeare Company Christmas, a take on Christmas and other December-related holidays.

On 8 August 2006, George Lucas gave permission for the Reduced Shakespeare Company to produce a 20-minute stage comedy version of his six-film Star Wars saga. [1]

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