The Actor and the World.

Since 2006, the mission of Naked Shakes has been to present energetic, exciting, raw, vibrant Shakespeare using the power of the actors and the language.  The critically acclaimed, award-winning Naked Shakes has performed at UCSB and transported productions to Southwest Shakespeare Company at Taliesin West in Scottsdale, AZ,  the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles, Westmont College and Center Stage in downtown Santa Barbara.  Past Naked Shakes productions include:  the premiere of The Death of Kings, a two-part adaptation of Shakespeare’s history plays, Hamlet, King Lear, Much Ado about Nothing, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, The Winter’s Tale, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Measure for Measure, The Merchant of Venice, and The Tempest.

Naked Shakes believes in the transformation of the actor and the space, along with the imaginative ability of the audience.  Each play is presented clearly and directly so that the audience inhabits the imaginative world of the play through Shakespeare’s language.  The barren physical theater space is very important to the Naked Shakes concept; it takes on the identity of whatever locale or particular piece of poetic language is described, and yet always reminds the audience they are in a theater.  When Prospero in The Tempest describes “the great Globe itself,” he is not only referring to the entire Earth, but also the “Globe” Theater – Shakespeare’s theater.  That duality is what Naked Shakes is all about.