A rotating gallery of playbills, production stills, candid cast photos, book covers, reviews, costume and set renderings, actual text, rewrites from Elizabeth's exciting play-ography!!!
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SHAKESPEARE IN MIND -- CONTEMPORARY PLAYWRIGHTS HAVE A LITTLE POST-MODERN FUN WITH THE BARD
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"Thank you to the actors in my play. Jessica Wilson, Grant Schumer, Josiah Knight, Justin Wright, Nick Spencer, Joey Bahena, Martha White, Brooke Jennett, Sophia Franklin-Burke and Mollie LaFavors. Yes, it was a big cast for a little play," -- Elizabeth Wong
13 plays original plays commissioned and directed by
Michael Bigelow Dixon.
Performed at Transylvania University; A Theatre Program Production.
Produced by Sullivan Canaday White, theatre department program director.
SHAKESPEARE IN MIND is a melding of professional and student writings inspired by Shakespeare's plays. Soon to be published.
About the play, from the director:
"This original Transy production channel-surfs Shakespeare through American culture in the 21st century. Shakespeare’s scenes and soliloquys mix with contemporary playwriting, film performances share the stage with Shakespearean swag, and works based on, inspired by or ripped off the Bard combine with biography and theories that someone else wrote Shakespeare’s plays."
"I read a lot about how stories affect the brain, and why violence and scary stories...play an important function in our fight-or-flight response. Fascinating new science," -- Elizabeth Wong.
Profressional Playwrights Commissioned
(in alphabetical order)
Janet Allard - "Out Light" inspired by Othello
Constance Congdon -- "Hair of the Dog"
Richard Dresser - "Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow" inspired by Macbeth
Jon Jory - "If They Do See" inspired by Romeo & Juliet
Valerie Smith - "Gogglebox Hamlet" inspired by Hamlet
and
ELIZABETH WONG - "Shakespeare's Brainscan" inspired by Titus Andronicus
SHAKESPEARE'S BRAINSCAN is my contribution to SHAKESPEARE IN MIND. My play explores the neuroscience of storytelling, the effects of violence on brain chemistry, and why the brain enjoys fear -- inspired by one of Shakespeare's most violent and bloody plays TITUS ANDRONICUS.
Here is what Michael Bigelow Dixon sent to both student and professional writers to start them on this journey:
Short plays and Soliloquys may but need not be written within the conventions of Realism.
Playwrights are encouraged to experiment with theatrical ideas such as
re-contextualization (who’s interpreting Shakespeare and why)
bricolage (collaging Shakespeare’s plays with other texts)
The plays and revised soliloquys should be conceived for twenty-year-old actors to comment on life in the 21st century by riffing or reflecting on the works of William Shakespeare (or vice versa).
LEXINGTON, KY -- My show needed a lot of blood pacts apparently. That's a first for me!" -- Elizabeth Wong (Photos courtesy of Joseph Rey Au).
"I wrote the play for three Shakespeares on stage simulaneously, in lab coats. Michael cast three women. Cool!" -- Elizabeth Wong
Produced by Transylvania University Theatre Department at the Lucille C Little Theatre.
Student Writers
Mollie LaFavers, Dean Staley, Jeremy Paden, Justin Wright
