Pandemic Play Series
What people are saying.
“Playwright Jim Lair Beard is giving us one of the most important gifts for the future of live theatre: writing new plays that are companion pieces to Shakespeare's. The Elizabethan and Jacobean canon will always be in demand, but classical theatres also crave and need new voices, new stories, fresh journeys for new audiences. By crafting deft, new prequels and sequels that are filled with vivid, sharp, and imaginative dialogue, as well as colorful and richly drawn characters that are both dramatically rich and laugh-out-loud funny, Beard is daring theatres to return to true rotating repertory and stage his new pieces in partnership with the appropriate Shakespeare play. It’s exactly what I was looking for at the American Shakespeare Center’s Blackfriars Playhouse when I launched the Shakespeare’s New Contemporaries project in 2017, and it’s what I will proudly stage when we build the new American Globe Center in Stratford, CT. Get in on the ground floor, these plays are the real deal.”
— Jim Warren, American Shakespeare Center Founding Artistic Director | American Globe Center Artistic Director
“Blue-Eyed Hag offers producers a beautiful dichotomy of elements--classic and modern, touching and funny, brilliant and simple--wrapped up in compelling characters, drawn in a near Shakespearean way.”
— Sarah Enloe, Shakespeare Theatre Association (President)
“The real charm of Beard's work is that he skillfully and artfully manages to walk fine lines between seemingly disparate worlds: His dialogue evokes the sounds and rhythms of early modern drama while the play's themes and messages are radical and progressive. The plays are grounded in a genuine love for Shakespeare, but do not shy away from significantly expanding and challenging ideas presented in the original works. While the plays rely on a classic structure and setting (no Caesar in space here!), Beard is very much writing about our world and all the struggles and complications that come with it. Beard, like Shakespeare, also weaves an intellectual curiosity with a wonderful sense of humor and the plays boast many adept clowns from wordsmiths to bumbling servants. Most importantly, the plays are not simply literary experiments or simple parody: they really work as pieces of playable drama with terrific opportunities for both actors and designers. ”
— Benjamin Curns, Actor/Director
“Jim Lair Beard has an ear for dialogue. His heightened language has a Shakespearean feel that draws the listener into the world of the play. Malvolio’s Twin is both hilarious and disconcerting. In lesser hands, it would be condemned as "improbable fan-fiction," but Beard rises above that by exploring and expanding on the psyche of the characters of Twelfth Night. In this bold, new work, he both illuminates the actions in Twelfth Night and creates a story that is completely new.”
-Dennis Henry, Artistic Director/Hoosier Shakespeare Festival
“Blue-Eyed Hag is excellently in conversation with Shakespeare's The Tempest. There are also hues of the play that speak to today's land acknowledgment for Native Americans, but without being overtly political. It well connects Early-Modern style and structure with the theatre of today.”
— Jeremy West, Artistic Director/Silver Line Theatre Exchange