bS Theatre

Attending a bS Theatre performance is unlike any Shakespeare you’ve seen: trimmed down to the essential text, rehearsed just 3 times, and happening in the middle of your favorite bars and restaurants in Orange County.

“Every convention of your average modern theatre serves to cut the audience off from the play. In every way, they tell us to shut down and erase ourselves. The actors are blinded by the stage lights, barely able to see the audience sitting quietly in the darkness, turning their tickets into fifty-dollar naps.

This is madness.

Because in Shakespeare’s theatre, the audience was an unruly bunch of drunks who came for the bear-baiting and stayed to check out the tragedy. They were practically on stage, buying nuts and beer from wandering vendors all the way to the bloody end. Shakespeare’s actors had no director. They rehearsed only the fights and dances. They got their lines and their cues [and] when they failed, they probably really bit it.

bS Theatre takes as much of it as seems useful. We read the play once, we memorize our parts, and rehearse only three times. We have no director, and we perform in bars, for free. For you! An unruly bunch of drunks!

We’re not trying to re-create Elizabethan London. We’re trying make a space where Shakespeare’s beautiful, bawdy and bloody plays feel at home. Where actors can be responsible for their own creative work. We’re looking for a party. A riot! A hoot! Come join us. 

Paraphrased from our good friends and inspiration at the Backroom Shakespeare Project