Shakespeare Gone Wild! This Is Definitely Not the Shakespeare You Read in High School

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) June 21, 2004 -- SAN FRANCISCO, CA�In honor of Shakespeare�s 440th birthday, The Un-Scripted Theater Company announced their upcoming run of improvised Shakespeare shows, Improvised Bawdy Shakespeare.

Improvised Bawdy Shakespeare takes a stand against Shakespeare�s bowdlerization two centuries ago, and seeks to reverse the trend. Around 1800, the Bowdler family (Henrietta, a rigorous evangelist, and later her brother Thomas) created the Family Shakespeare, cutting out Shakespeare�s naughtiest bits to render the Bard�s works more family-friendly. Two hundred years later, The Un-Scripted Theater Company is putting all the naughty bits back in � and then some!



�If you read Shakespeare�s First Folio texts [the earliest working editions of Shakespeare�s plays, complete with original language, spelling and punctuation], they�re completely raunchy! But even if the language hadn�t been changed, today�s audiences wouldn�t get most of it anyway�it�s just not meaningful anymore,� says Christian Utzman, the show�s director.

�A lot of people assume Shakespeare wrote the dirty parts for the Groundlings,� Utzman continues. �But now we�re learning that isn�t true�everybody loved the sexual innuendo, from the Groundlings in the pit on up to the Queen (though maybe she wouldn�t admit it in public!).�



Rather than re-writing the Bard�s works, The Un-Scripted Theater Company will improvise full-length plays in Shakespeare�s style. After weeks and months of studying the actual texts and practicing the language (not to mention the innuendo), they say they will be ready to give their audiences a show that the Poet himself could have written. �You can improvise anything if you know it well enough,� director Utzman says. �Even Shakespeare.�

Improvised Bawdy Shakespeare will begin its 7-week run on Friday, July 9, at the Temescal Arts Center in Oakland. After three weeks in Oakland (8 pm Fridays and Saturdays, July 9 through 24) , the run will move to San Francisco�s Exit Stage Left Theatre for an additional four weeks (8 pm Fridays and Saturdays, July 30 through August 21). Tickets are $10 general admission, or $7 for students, seniors, and improvisers.



For more information on The Un-Scripted Theater Company, visit their Web site at www.un-scripted.com or call 415-869-5384.



For more information on bowdlerization or on Shakespeare�s First Folio, visit these links:

� The University of Chicago Library: http://efts.lib.uchicago.edu/efts/OTA-SHK/

� The Oxford University Press: http://www.oup.co.uk/academic/humanities/literature/viewpoint/anthony_west/

� The Original Shakespeare Company: http://www.oscuk.com/

� St. Andrew�s College: http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~adm6/en3025/listcoll.html

� The Saint Report: http://www.goatview.com/july11thomasbowdler.htm



Other books:

� Shakespeare�s Bawdy by Eric Partridge

� Secrets of Acting Shakespeare: The Original Approach by Patrick Tucker

� Dr. Bowdler�s Legacy: A History of Expurgated Books in England and America by Noel Perrin



# # #