Improv Night Pizza Party

 🎭It's time for… the Shakespeare Feaste!🎭

INTRO

The Shakespeare Feaste is a super fun “dinner and a show” performance.

Here are the main things you will do at the Feaste

• Serve the food

• Perform monologues and scenes (from Shakespeare plays!)

• Sing a few songs

But these are just the basics, there's a lot more we’re going to be doing, including telling jokes, magic tricks, and interacting with the people there. It’s a performance… but don't think of it as a regular show.

PART 1: THE FEASTE CHARACTERS

There are a lot of different characters at the Shakespeare Feaste, everyone is going to get a chance to do something fun! Take a look at this list or characters and what they do, and start thinking about which part you might want to play!

King and/or Queen of the Feaste

• Very good at improv

• Keeps the audience engaged

• Interacts with people

• Kind of runs the show

• For this part you need to be good at thinking quickly and not be afraid to make bold choices in your acting

Lady or Lord Chamberlain

• Works hand in hand with the king/queen

• Announces every guest as they arrive

• Announces the performances

• Should have a fairly loud voice

• Good at improv

Beggars

• Not afraid to make a complete fool out of yourself

• Will do little things (like dance, sing, recite poetry) in exchange for money

• Crawls around on the floor

Mistress and/or Master of the Salt

• Carry around salt to season the food…when it's paid for with a kiss (on the cheek!)

Black Market Fork Sellers

• Walks around with a coat full of hidden illegal forks and secretly sells them to the patrons

Serving wenches and squires+other roles

• Jugglers

• Fortune tellers

• Singers

• Magicians

• Pirates

• Anything else like this you can think of!

PART 2: THE PERFORMANCES

Part of the reason we do a Feaste is so you can get a chance to perform Shakespeare in a really fun environment. Here is what we are doing.

Group scene—Comedy of Errors (everybody)

Monologues (3 people)

Scenes (2 scenes, each have 2-3 people)

If you are interested in A) having lines in the group scene, B) performing a monologue, or C) performing in a small scene, you need to:

PREPARE A MONOLOGUE!

How to do that:

1. Find any short monologue from a Shakespeare play (about 30 seconds is all you need!)

2. Memorize it (or do the best you can. It’s okay if you need to read off a paper)

3. Add character and emotion

4. Practice practice practice!

5. Have it ready for the audition day

If you have a monologue ready for audition day, we will consider you for one of those three things (monologue, small scene, character in the big scene)

ALTERNATE

If you already have a small scene  idea in mind—and you know who you want to do it with, you can prepare a scene instead of a monologue. Follow the same steps as the monologue, but find a SCENE instead and do it with one or two other people. Have it prepared for audition day!

How to find a monologue:

If you don't know how to find a monologue, a quick google will get you pretty far. If you need somewhere to start, here are some websites I might use:

https://www.shakespeare-monologues.org/home

http://www.monologuearchive.com/s/shakespeare_william.html

Most of these will be longer than 30 seconds, if that's the case just don't do the whole thing.

NOTE: a lot of monologues you find are going to be separated by men/women…you can ignore that! Just find something you like and don't worry about the gender of the character.

AUDITION DAY (Friday, Feb 4 @6pm): What to Expect

This will not be like regular auditions! We will have everyone there the whole time. Here’s what we’ll do:

• Improv games. Remember the games we played before play rehearsal some mornings? That's what this is. This will help us see who is good at thinking quickly and improvising!

• Monologue/scene auditions. Everyone that has prepared a monologue or a small group scene will have a chance to perform it. This is so we can decide who will do those things at the Feast, plus who will play the main characters in the big scene.

That was a lot! Let’s review.

There are two main things we need cast: the Feaste characters, and the Shakespeare performances.

There will be an audition day at the Law’s house sometime in the future, the date is TBD.

When we get to audition day, you need to have these things completed:

1. Think of a couple option for characters you might want to play at the Feaste

2. (optional) Prepare a monologue or scene for audition day