ShakeItUp: The Improvised Shakespeare Show at The Turbine Theatre

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The Bard hasn’t written anything new for centuries... so ShakeItUp Theatre are here to lend a

helping hand! Acclaimed Edinburgh Fringe hit ShakeItUp: The Improvised Shakespeare Show is

set to conclude its UK Tour with a run at London’s Turbine Theatre this Autumn. In this witty

improv extravaganza, ShakeItUp Theatre combine Shakespeare’s language, audience

suggestions, and the company’s overactive imaginations, to create an all-new engaging and

entertaining Shakesperean epic.

William Shakespeare’s plays contain the greatest love stories, tragedies and tales of greed and jealousy in literature. ShakeItUp: The Improvised Shakespeare Show takes all the most exciting and high stakes elements of Shakespeare, and combines them with his most bonkers bits (a Fairy Queen falling in love with a donkey, anyone?) The audience is asked if they want a Bloody Tragedy, a Romantic Comedy, or an Epic History, and the ShakeItUp team takes it from there – with the addition of some audience-penned Shakesperean lines, which may even change the course of the play.

All shows are all created live in the moment with no room for error, and are accompanied by the talented (and flexible) ShakeItUp Band. ShakeItUp doesn’t have a directing character on stage, with the story being created live in the moment by the actors, with no pre-set characters or plots. Using improvised verse, song, dance, fights, and more, the improvising ShakeItUp bards create a new play, live on stage. Whether they last experienced Shakespeare at school or can recite the complete works, audiences will delight in a laugh-out-loud, unpredictable evening of bard-based bedlam.

Artistic Director James Dart comments, Shakespeare’s plays contain the greatest love stories, the greatest expressions of greed, jealousy, lust, and pride in all of literature. They also contain fairies falling in love with donkeys and people being baked into pies! Our show takes the most exciting, emotional and high stakes elements of Shakespeare and combines them with his downright bonkers bits to create a highly engaging, authentic, and entertaining Shakespearean epic. In this, the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s first folio, it is time for some new Shakespearean Classics to take The Turbine Theatre by storm.

ShakeItUp Theatre believes that improv is much more than quick gags, and can instead be used to create hilarious and moving stories. The company, under the mentorship of Mischief Theatre’s Dave Hearn and The School of Night’s Dylan Emery and Sean McCann (Showstopper! The Improvised Musical), has performed at venues and festivals across the UK, from the prestigious Minack Theatre to Pentonville Prison, providing improv workshops to prisons and charities.

Praise for ShakeItUp at the Edinburgh Fringe 2023

One of the best improvised shows out there – West End Best Friend

Quick witted, inexhaustible, and absolutely hysterical – London Theatre Reviews

Something Shakespeare would have been proud of – BroadwayWorld

An authentic, if strange, work of Shakespeare – Upper Circle