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Directing Shakespeare!
June 14, 2026 @ 10:00 am
ORIGINAL PRACTICES WORKSHOP with Jim Warren
- FlagShakes Guest Director of this summer’s Antony and Cleopatra and As You Like It
- American Globe Center Founding Artistic Director
- American Shakespeare Center & Blackfriars Playhouse Founder and former Artistic Director
Is William Shakespeare the genius we’re usually told he is from day one of high school? If he is, Genius Boy was writing for a specific kind of theatrical environment that was a lot different from today’s modern theatre.
Jim has spent almost four decades going Back to the Future by re-creating the staging conditions for which Shakespeare wrote to recover the some of the joys and magic he baked into the plays that sometimes get lost when you play with all the cool technological tricks we’ve invented in the last 400+ years.
Please join Jim and FlagShakes to chat about, experience, and dive into some of Shakespeare’s Staging Conditions (Original Practices):
- Shared Light
- Thrust Staging
- Inviting the Audience into the World of the Play
- Actors Playing Multiple Roles
- Live Unplugged Music
- Live Unplugged Sound Effects
- Rotating Repertory
- Embedded Stage Directions
We’ll have TWO workshops: one for ACTORS and one for DIRECTORS to explore these provocative, practical principles from these two different perspectives. Discover how Shakespeare’s Staging Conditions allow the plays to come alive as visceral, vital Theatre of the Imagination rather than trying to be movies onstage.
FlagShakes has been using Original Practices for many years; let’s have some fun playing with the what/why/how!
Over the course of his career, Jim Warren has directed over 200 productions, produced and cast over 300 shows, coached thousands of actors, built a theatre company from a $500 student-start-up to a four-million-dollar Equity playhouse, led touring troupes through 47 states and six countries, mentored dozens of developing theatres, and taught students of all ages the power promised by Theatre of the Imagination. Jim founded the American Shakespeare Center when he was twenty-two years old (built the Blackfriars Playhouse in 2001), retiring in 2017 to pursue a solo career as a consultant, director, author, and educator.
More info about Jim Warren: jimwarren-director.com
