Improbable Fictions
Improbable Fictions was started in 2010 within the Hudson Strode program in Renaissance Studies in the UA English Department by Nic Helms, a graduate student who began working with The Rude Mechanicals as an assistant director on Macbeth (2009). He understood that many students have problems attempting to read Shakespeare's plays, largely by not being able to visualize them. So he began, with The Rude Mechanicals, to stage readings of plays during the school year, mostly but not exclusively by Shakespeare. On two occasions Steve Burch adapted and directed classical Greek plays, Lysistrata by Aristophanes and Hecuba by Euripides (see below). He also acted in most of the readings, including Lear in King Lear, King Henry IV in Henry IV Parts One and Two, Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, the Ghost in Hamlet, and Costard in Love's Labours Lost.
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Bingo (2018)Written by Edward Bond about the last days of Shakespeare's life. Performed at the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center.
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Lysistrata (2012)
A review and full audio file can be found at Improbable Fiction's site.
Read Lysistrata's script in it's entirety. |
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Hecuba (2011)
Review by Improbable Fictions
Hecuba is a prisoner’s tragedy; if a modern analogy be permitted, a concentration camp play . . . . [It] is born out of contemporary experience; it is a bitterly human and darkly profound reflection of the ills of the Peloponnesian War . . . . Thucydides reflected upon the frightful demoralization and deprivation which the war had brought about in individual as well as in social and political life. Euripides, in his Hecuba, presents a similar indictment of this time; and, in its universal.... Read the rest of this review and more... Read Hecuba's script in it's entirety. |