I’m happy to announce that the long-awaited Open-Ended run of a SL Shakespeare Company production is now in the works! Casting has just been finalized moments ago, and although the actors won’t have an entire summer to both breathe in the language and era and rehearse, we’re still hoping to put on our usual captivating show for you–soon!

With this production, I’m introducing a new production serial–the OEP, a.k.a., the Open-Ended (run) Production.

The idea is that the OEP’s would generally follow a much-hyped fewer-showdates season (aka, your typical limited performance run).

Our inaugural OEP, as you probably already know, is based on AP1′s Twelfth Night.

For more details on Production Serials, see here.

Tags: OEP, serials

***********This Week’s Events***************************************************

^ Unless otherwise mentioned, all events are SLT/PST at The SL Globe Theatre, aka “The Globe” @ sLiterary (23,13,23)

^ All times are “SL Time” aka PST -
or the time listed on the top right hand corner of your SL software

>>> Thursday Jan 29: ^
* Thursday, Jan 29 @ 1800 SLT: Live Music @ the Globe: Modest Shotakovich
* Thursday, Jan 29 @ 1900 SLT: Live Music @ the Globe: Montavious Peccable
* Thursday, Jan 29 @ 2000 SLT: Live Music @ the Globe: Vladamir Lamont

>>> Saturday Jan 31: ^
We announce the dates of our first ever open-ended run of Twelfth Night: Act 1

Musicians – if you are interested in playing @ the Globe Theatre, please contact Throughthesewalls Moody

Audition Announcements here.

Tags: "MUSIC NOT POLITICS", Open-Ended Run Announcement

***********This Week’s Events***************************************************

^ Unless otherwise mentioned, all events are SLT/PST at The SL Globe Theatre, aka “The Globe” @ sLiterary (23,13,23)

^ All times are “SL Time” aka PST -
or the time listed on the top right hand corner of your SL software

>>> Thursday Jan 22: ^
12 to 1 PM: Michi Renoir plays in “Live Music @ the Globe”, presented by MUSIC NOT POLITICS
1 to 2 PM: Anu Papp plays in “Live Music @ the Globe”, presented by MUSIC NOT POLITICS

>>> Saturday Jan 24: ^
12 to 1 PM: English Music Around the 17th Century – Thom Dowd
1 PM: SLSC Open Auditions

Musicians – if you are interested in playing @ the Globe Theatre, please contact Throughthesewalls Moody

Audition Announcements here.

Tags: "MUSIC NOT POLITICS", Auditions

Continuing our tradition in producing several plays, but focusing on just one Shakespearean play per year, to make it the *best* that it can be – this year, we hope to present a full length Twelfth Night, entertaining and educating – worth *every* minute of your time.

If you’re in the SL Shakespeare Company group inworld, check group notices archive for a HoloLight attached in the latest group notice. Or… visit the SL Globe Theatre to grab a free copy of the 2009 Edition of the SL Shakespeare Company HoloLight. Last year, we had the Ghost from Hamlet. This year, we’ve got Feste the Clown! Rez & click to find out the next show date!

Tags: feste, HoloLight

Ladies and gent – fresh from http://campaign.SLshakespeare.com – we have met and surpassed our 50% goal… which means, we will be around for at least 6 more months! The Campaign is not over yet, though. We’re still going to try meeting the 100% goal. The deadline has been extended (slightly) to Feb 11. We can make it! Campaign on!

As of this moment – thanks to the support of all of you in this group and in SL and beyond – we’ve reached 51.98%! Thank you so much!

The SOS Campaign status has jumped nearly 2% in the last 24 hours. Thank you to everyone who’s contributed – and we’re getting closer to our goal, but your continued help would be greatly appreciated!

If you have seen any of our productions, you’ll see that we not only bring quality arts and culture to Second Life, we also create and utilize new technologies to expand and evolve the medium.

Below is a very brief summary of each of our main productions from 2008. In addition to supporting more productions of similar caliber for 2009, the SOS Campaign would also help support the Primtings, Shakespeare, and sLiterary sims.

• Feb 28, 2008: In our inaugural live performance of “Hamlet 1-1 Extended,” we presented the first four-island sim performance of a play in SL. Anticipating the large audience, we used a variety of preloading techniques and minimal texturing, but still showed off our trademark visual excellence—with photorealistic skins and sculpted talking faces based on the RL actor’s faces. While there was some debate on whether we should perform the entire play, we stuck with quality over quantity and showed off the scene the best we could. Care was taken in both costume and set design to create the historically-accurate Elizabethan atmosphere you saw live at the SL Globe Theatre stage. In addition, we also established standards for HUD-based multi-lingual subtitle support. (Progamme Booklet.)
• Apr 23, 2008: As part of the Shakespeare 24, international 24 hour celebration of Shakespeare’s birthday in RL, we performed the famous play within a play–”Hamlet 3-2: The Mousetrap.” We managed to rehearse and bring to the virtual stage a cast of nearly twenty actors from around the world to give life to the actor avatars, dressed in historically accurate Elizabethan attire. The performance consulted Shakespeare scholars from around the world to present what Socrates might call “an examined” interpretation of the scene. This was the first ever usage of a recorded period music segment played using SL voice, as “piped” by an avatar. Our continued usage of actor alt’s helped the audience easily find the voice sliders in SL voice to tune into the performance. (Programm Booklet.)
• Jun 20, 2008: We took a break from Hamlet to pursue a non-era specific costumed staged reading series of the full length Twelfth Night, but in bite-sized pieces, presenting roughly a scene per week in the days between June and July. Devoid of “the sound of motion,” the costumed staged reading actors were distinctly grayscale. The performance was done with a moving cast, which sometimes enlisted audience members from the last week; this was the first tag-team performance of a Shakespearean play in the world–in both RL and SL.
• Sept 12, 2008: Continuing our hiatus from the Elizabethan era, we brought to the virtual world a modern science fiction play by a published/performed playwright. One’s A Pawn of Time was our first full-length performance of a one act play. “Seamless advertisements” were woven into the set, where great care was taken to simulate a stereotypically impoverished apartment of a physics grad student’s. The box set, whose dimensions adhered to the stage’s characteristic twin pillars, did not modify the existing elements of the Globe Theatre’s thrust stage. This is one of the first plays on SL where the director controlled the audience view through real time dynamic camera controls.
• Nov 13, 2008: This November production of “Twelfth Night: Act 1” continued our tradition of performing full-length unedited first folio Shakespearean pieces. We decided to take an indefinite hiatus from Hamlet due to the costs and time required to create the many Elizabethan historically-accurate costumes. Twelfth Night was performed without era limitations; fewer custom costumes were created, which allowed for the creation of custom sets for each of Act 1′s five scenes. Memorably, we brought a real storm to the Globe Theatre thrust stage. Special care was taken to make the performance as lag-free as possible: the sets were placed without the usage of rezzors, seamlessly loaded. We continued the usage of real time dynamic camera controls. This was the first play on SL where global lighting was changed for each scene. Programme Booklet.
• Dec 21, 2008: On Winter Solstice, when many actors were safe snoozing in bed or otherwise, on the coldest day of the year, we brought to ice a cast of a baker’s dozen “self-powered” avatars controlled by scripts and bots–who zoomed around on ice skates in Shakespeare on Ice.

All of that was accomplished without the aid of any grants or external support. It is all because of you.

We can’t do this again this year without your continued help. Please donate. Every $L counts, and every dollar counts – to help bring us closer to our SOS “Save our Sims” Campaign goal!

Donations are accepted in either RL or SL currency – please help us raise our SOS Campaign goal, so that we would not have to worry about land tier fees for either 6 months (50% goal) or 1 year (100% goal).

Our Campaign status is currently at 30.6%, and it is fast approaching our deadline! Your help would be much appreciated: while we are already starting to plan our upcoming season, we will not be able to carry it out until we have met at least 50% of our fundraising goal. Ideas are welcome!

Some of you have suggested that we offer direct payments via RL currency. This is now possible through sLiterary, our parent NPO.

The PayPal account donate@sLiterary.org is directly linked to http://campaign.SLshakespeare.com at the conversion rate of US$1:L$266. This means that every single donation received through this account will be immediately displayed on the Campaign website. Please note that your personal information will be kept confidential. There *are* transaction fees deducted by PayPal, however, so please do not donate using PayPal for amounts less than $1.

Once again, our SOS Campaign is only to raise enough funding to support 3 of our 4 island sims for either 6 months (50%) or 12 months (100%). This is the bare basic amount that we need to survive, and if you have any belief or hope in us – then, please, please, please donate!

There are now several ways you can help out and/or donate:

1. Drop by and donate inworld to a SOS kiosk. (Visit the Campaign website to see the latest active kiosks.)
2. Rez and host a SOS kiosk. (Get one here!)
3. Create a product and sell it through a SOS vendor. (Please reply directly to comments for this post.)
4. Donate in RL currency via PayPal by clicking “Send Money” once logged into your PayPal account. Send to: donate@sLiterary.org (Replace the subject line with the name you’d like publicly displayed on the site)
5. Donate in RL currency directly using this form below:

***********This Week’s Events***************************************************

^ Unless otherwise mentioned, all events are SLT/PST at The SL Globe Theatre, aka “The Globe” @ sLiterary (23,13,23)

^ All times are “SL Time” aka PST -
or the time listed on the top right hand corner of your SL software

>>> Thursday Jan 12: ^
10 to 11 AM: Arman Finesmith plays in “Live Music @ the Globe”, presented by MUSIC NOT POLITICS
11 to 12 PM: Rich Desoto plays in “Live Music @ the Globe”, presented by MUSIC NOT POLITICS
12 to 1 PM: DonFranko Dagostino plays in “Live Music @ the Globe”, presented by MUSIC NOT POLITICS

>>> Thursday Jan 15: ^
11 to 12 PM: Shoe Spitteler Opens “Live Music @ the Globe”, presented by MUSIC NOT POLITICS
12 to 1 PM: KevinMThomas Carpool plays in “Live Music @ the Globe”, presented by MUSIC NOT POLITICS
1 to 2 PM: Beeflin Grut plays in “Live Music @ the Globe”, presented by MUSIC NOT POLITICS

Musicians – if you are interested in playing @ the Globe Theatre, please contact Throughthesewalls Moody

Audition Announcements here.

Tags: "MUSIC NOT POLITICS", Auditions

The year’s first open auditions will be held on Saturday, January 24 @ 1 PM SL Time. We are hoping to launch an open-ended run of Twelfth Night: Act 1 (Production Serial: AP1) in February, exact timing TBD. Auditions would be for roles in this open-ended production, and also several possible productions, including a Challenge Production (a non-Shakespearean production) and Twelfth Night: Act 2.

Please be sure you have SL voice configured prior to auditioning.

1. Please have prepared a passage (from Twelfth Night, Act 1) of no more than 5 minutes. Polish it well; this should demonstrate what you are capable of at your best.
2. Be ready to perform another segment from the perspective of the character you wish to play (though you might not get casted as that character).
3. Be prepared to demonstrate (voice) range.

If you can’t make it, please email item #1 as an mp3 file (no larger than 8 mb) to production at SLshakespeare dot com

See PR here: Auditions for SL Shakespeare Company

Tags: Auditions