Sin City Shakespeare

Some people love Shakespeare's work, others hate it, but I believe that most of those who hate it do so because they are terrified by it. We've all had to study the material in school with varying degrees of success. This is mostly because the words of Shakespeare are all too often impersonalized and deified. In this situation, two crucially important facts are often ignored.

1. Shakespeare wrote for the common person not the intellectual elite.

2. Shakespeare was meant to be read with the goal of performance, not the goal of being literature.

The second point above is perhaps the most important. Very few have had the opportunity to explore the text with the intention of breathing life into the character saying the words and searching for the meaning and intention behind them as genuine speech, rather than just the words on a page. 

Too often, in the effort to appeal to modern audiences, modern Shakespeare productions seek  to impose an idea on the text.  They re-work it or re-write it.  Such things are unnecessary. Whatever statement one wants to illuminate for the audience is already there in the canon. The challenge is finding the right play to illustrate the statement, and the right conceptual treatment to make the play timely and impactful to the modern audience.  We don’t do pumpkin pants, but we don’t re-write the plays either.

As the Theatrical arm of Humanity Thru Art, it is the mission of Sin City Shakespeare to bring an innovative, dramaturgically sound Shakespeare experience to the Las Vegas Valley.  

Our current projects include: The Sin City Shakespeare Exploration Series, The Othello Project, The Garage Workshop Series, and The Psyber Shakespeare Initiative.

For more details choose the appropriate button.

Adam Stuart Littman

Artistic Director, Sin City Shakespeare