Posts Tagged shakespeare one-acts
Review: ‘The Weird Sisters Go Rogue’
Posted by Dwayne Yancey in News, Reviews, Uncategorized on September 10, 2021
Jack Seamus Conley of the Rainy Day Arts Collective in Seattle, Washington posts this lovely review on the New Play Exchange of my one-act THE WEIRD SISTERS GO ROGUE:
Love this piece! Incredibly creative female-centric take on Macbeth that is sure to delight Shakespeare lovers, witch enthusiasts, and appreciators of parody/comedy alike. I’m always enthralled by pieces that give additional voices to the more “minor” characters in well known tales, and “The Weird Sisters Go Rogue” does not disappoint. ”Love this piece! Incredibly creative female-centric take on Macbeth that is sure to delight Shakespeare lovers, witch enthusiasts, and appreciators of parody/comedy alike. I’m always enthralled by pieces that give additional voices to the more “minor” characters in well known tales, and “The Weird Sisters Go Rogue” does not disappoint. ”
Video: ‘A Couch for Luxury and Damned Incest’
Posted by Dwayne Yancey in News, Productions, Uncategorized on July 12, 2019
Here’s video of my 10-minute play in Overnight Sensations 2019, a 24-hour play festival sponsored by Hollins University’s Playwright’s Lab and Mill Mountain Theatre. An earlier post detailed how the event works. Thanks to director Amile Wilson for the video (and the great direction!).
Cast:
Drifer: Gianni Palmarini
Bed: Bailee Adams
Chair: Nancy Lawrence
Couch: Kelly Anglim
Desk: Gene Marrano
Table: Walter Dodd
MY PREVIOUS OVERNIGHT SENSATIONS: Read the rest of this entry »
Final list of awards for “One Word Macbeth” in Australia
Posted by Dwayne Yancey in News, Productions, Reviews on September 9, 2015
The awesome poster.
Got this email today from the producer of my show THE ONE-WORD MACBETH, which Pop Culture Theatre in Melbourne has produced in various festivals this past few months in the Victorian Drama League:
Dear Dwayne,
I thought that I would do an email to you to just give you a final summing up of how we went with your piece One Word Macbeth.
I know that Bruce has been keeping you in the loop, but just so you can see it all at once in terms of awards:
Foster One Act Play Festival:
Best Production
Kyenton One Act Play Festival:
Runner up best production
Best youth actress (Madeline Hardie)
Best youth ensemble
Best clarity and diction (Chelsea Hyde)
Mt Players One Act Play Festival:
Victorian Drama League Most Promising Performer (Laura Marmion)
Youth Encouragement Award (ensemble)
In addition to the awards above they were also nominated for Best Production at Mt Players, and the adjudicator wanted to nominate them at Kyenton for Best Production by the youth are not allowed to be considered for senior awards. (Yes we are still trying to work out how he awarded them runner up in the youth, but wanted to put them into the seniors!!)
I know that you have mentioned a couple of times about the number of the cast, so just for your own records here is how it can work with 5 performers:
Witch one, Lady Macbeth, Messenger for MacDuff – Chelsea Hyde
Witch two, Guard one, Macduff, Murderer one – Josie Hardie
Witch three, Duncan, Murderer two, Messenger for Macbeth – Alicia Henry
Macbeth – Madeline Hardie
Banquo, Guard two – Laura Marmion
The costumes for all but Macbeth were just one simple thing to show the character – Banquo for example had a tartan sash.
Macbeth was a full costume.
There was lots and lots of running for the cast!
We are filming the showcase performance and we will get you a copy of it, so you can see for yourself how we did it.
Thank you for allowing us to perform your work, thank you for taking the chance and allowing us to do it with not only youth but five of them. We had hoped to get one more performance of this production in competition but the festival declined the entry in favour of an adult one. The organizer of the festival has a history of refusing youth entries and even though the girls have nearly won against adults, she deemed once again that youth are not of a sufficient level of skill to be considered. (Even though OWM kicked the ass of their adult plays at every festival!!)
You work inspired the girls to learn Macbeth, to ask questions about Shakespeare and to suddenly bring the words of the Bard to life to them because it wasn’t just sitting in class and reading. It was a fantastic tool to teach them the importance of words and inflection, a very important lesson that they will now carry with them through their performing lives.
Yours faithfully
John Jennings
There’s one more performance of the show — October 17 at the Knox Community Theatre in Bayswater, Victoria.
* More awards for ONE WORD MACBETH in Australia
* ONE WORD MACBETH wins another award in Australia
* Photos from THE ONE WORD MACBETH in Australia
* THE ONE-WORD MACBETH to be produced in Australia
One-acts scheduled for productions in Maryland and Singapore
Posted by Dwayne Yancey in News, Productions, Uncategorized on February 9, 2013
The spring high school play season is soon here, and I have at least two scripts scheduled for production:
* “Hit the Books,” by Walkersville High School, in Walkersville, Maryland, in April.
” Mac and Beth,” by inwardBOUND, in Singapore, also in April.
“Hit the Books” is published by Eldridge Plays and Musicals. This will be the 10th production. It’s about a high school girl who tries to study by hitting herself in the head with a book. More or less.
“Mac and Beth” is a riff on “Macbeth,” this time with two ne’er-do-well bank robbers. It’s published by Brooklyn Publishers; this will be the second full production; there was a previous staged reading at the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Va.
Video: “Macbeth, The Prequel” in Roanoke, Virginia
Posted by Dwayne Yancey in News, Productions, Video on November 6, 2012
I have almost an entire catalog of Shakespeare riffs, mostly one-acts aimed at schools. In fact, the very first script I had published was “Hamlet on Spring Break,” through Playscripts.
One sub-genre of Shakespeare I’ve been exploring has been prequels. I have two of them so far — “Macbeth, the Prequel” and “Hamlet, the Prequel” with two more in the editing stage.
This past week, “Macbeth, the Prequel” was staged at a private event in Roanoke, through the auspices of the Grandin Ensemble and the Star City Creators Society.
Here’s the result.
This script tells how the future Lady Macbeth came to be cursed, with deadly ramifications down the line. Her mother died in childbirth bearing her and her father, who longed for a male heir, refused to name her or acknowledge her as his heir. As you’ll see, I use the most famous (and some of the not-so-famous) lines from the actual Scottish play, but re-arrange them and assign them to different characters as the Thane of Skye plots how he can put his family on the throne — only to conclude that “the girl” is the key.
The cast:
* The Thane of Skye: Gary Reid
* Witches: Brandon duMonde, Ashley Smith, Leisa
* Lady Macbeth: Kelly Anglim
* Servant: Darlene Fedele
* Thane of Cawdor: Owen Merrit
* Macbeth: Owen Merritt (double-cast)
Directed by Brandon duMonde.
In addition, Charles Reynolds created some very spooky music to go with it, which you can find here.
dwayneyancey 