The Joy of Shakespeare: Fun in Timeless Theatre
Make it Sparkle Video with Tim Mooney
Performer & Playwright
4:08 (runtime)
Director’s Notes
Tim Mooney emphasizes the importance of finding the modern emotional corresponding event to make Shakespeare more relatable and engaging. He relates this to his analysis of "Henry the VI: Part Two" on YouTube.
Tim draws parallels between the rebellion in "Henry the VI: Part Two" and current socio-political events, suggesting that understanding this historical context enhances the relevance and impact of the play.
He discusses the anti-intellectualism highlighted in the peasant rebellion in the play, underlining the timeless relevance of themes found in Shakespeare's works.
Tim advises not to get intimidated by the language used in Shakespeare's plays and to focus on the periods that mark the ends of sentences for clarity of the ideas being presented.
He concludes by stressing the importance of consistency and a throughline in performances. He suggests that understanding where an idea in the text begins and ends can help in delivering a more effective performance.
About Tim Mooney
Timothy Mooney is the author/adaptor of "Breakneck Hamlet," "Breakneck Julius Caesar," "Lot o' Shakespeare," as well as "Shakespeare's Histories; Ten Epic Plays at a Breakneck Pace!" new one-man plays which "crack the code" on Shakespeare's most challenging work, which, along with his play "The Greatest Speech of All Time," makes challenging rhetorical delivery accessible to audiences everywhere. Mooney's newest play, "Man Cave, a One-Man Sci-Fi Climate Change Tragicomedy, has been celebrated as a "haunting and hilarious" awakening to the critical urgency of the climate crisis.
Mooney's acting textbook "Acting at the Speed of Life" breathes life into stylistic performance at high schools and colleges, while his "Big Book of Molière Monologues," has given actors everywhere a new resource for comic classical auditions. Over twenty years, Tim's very first one-man play, "Molière than Thou," drawn from his seventeen new adaptations of the plays of Molière (featuring Mooney's impish sense of rhyme) has been presented over 500 times, giving some hundred thousand students their first introduction to Molière. These iambic pentameter variations (most published by Playscripts and Stage Rights) have been produced well over 150 times around the world, winning competitions at high school, regional and national festivals.
Tim's latest adaptation is a new rhymed version of Goldoni's "The Servant of Two Masters." Mr. Mooney continues to present his (now) TEN one-man shows across North America under the umbrella of the "Timothy Mooney Repertory Theatre."