Inspire Your Day with Shakespear

Find the gambit of joys, sorrows, and laughter from Shakespeare.  Stephen Mead performs Shakespearean sonnets, monologues, and scenes.   

Interspersed with the sonnets in this program will be scenes from the comedies "As You Like It", "Twelfth Night or What You Will", and "The Tempest", the tragedies "Othello" and "Macbeth", the histories " King John" and "Richard the Second".

Duration One Hour 

You will begin your journey with:

Sonnet 18 "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Sonnet 27"Weary with toil I haste me to my bed.",
Sonnet 29 "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes"

Speech from the comedy As You Like It Act ii Scene 7 "All the world's a stage"

Sonnet 41 "Those Pretty wrongs that Liberty commits"
Sonnet 61 "Is it thy will, thy image should keep opem"
Sonnet 69 "Those parts of thee than the world's eye doth view"

Othello's speech to the Venetian Senate, Othello Act I Scene 3 "Most potent grave and reverend signiors"

Sonnet 80 "O! how I faint when I of you do write"
Sonnet 108 "What's in the brain that ink may character"
Sonnet 116 "Let me not to the marriage of true minds"

Speech of Prospero, The Tempest Act IV Scene 1 "Our revels now are ended"

 Stephen Mead Actor

Time Length Estimated 1:15 minutes

How you will view the performance: Zoom

What they Say About Stephen

Stephen Mead plays the narrator, Alice, and an unforgettable assortment of endearing and wacky characters including the Queen of Hearts, the Mad Hatter, Humpty Dumpty and Tweedledum and Tweedledee to provide a unique and unforgettable entertainment, including the poems “The Walrus and the Carpenter” and “Jabberwocky.”

Vividly acted out from memory, no special stage or lights required, Stephen Mead’s adaptations of “ALICE’s ADVENTURES UNDERGROUND” and “ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS” will amaze and delight audiences of all ages as they see more than forty separate characters come to life before their eyes.

Hilarious and enchanting, “ALICE” S ADVENTURES UNDERGROUND” and “ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS” are each approximately an hour long and are very suitable to being performed either separately or in one program with an intermission

About Stephen Mead

STEPHEN MEAD trained as an actor at London’s Royal Academy of
Dramatic Art. Besides appearing in many stage productions, he has worked
as a drama adviser to Goldcrest Films UK and written for Channel4 (TV).
Stephen has made a specialty of DRAMATIC RECITATIONS (from
memory) from the works of DICKENS, EDGAR ALLAN POE,LEWIS CARROLL, W.S. GILBERT and other 19th-century authors. These bring poems and prose by these writers to vivid life without costume, make-up, lights or scenery. Most 19th-century
literature was written to be heard as well as read, and Stephen Mead’s
enthralling renditions of these pieces have gripped audiences in the UK and
the US since 1987.

Since moving to the Washington DC area, Stephen has been working in collaboration with two local writers, Magus Magnus and Scott Courlander. Magus Magnus has written a series of original monologues he calls “idylls” which are perfectly in tune with the ideals and methods of  Stephen Mead. Magnus and Mead have devised a number of programs including “Murder on the Bare Stage”, a one man show which was performed at Capital Fringe Festival in July 2013, to capacity audiences and rapturous reviews. “Murder on the Bare Stage” has subsequently been performed in Baltimore, New York City and at the Harmon Hall of the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington DC.

Hailed by Washington City Paper as "a brilliant artist" DC Metro Theatre Arts marveled at " his truly breath-taking and captivating ability to bring fictional characters and the world they inhabit vividly to life." while other review noted "the piece demands that Mead portray a diversity of characters... which he differentiates splendidly and transitions into and out of on a dime. "
Suitable for all the family including children over the age of about six, the performance with a short-spoken introduction will last about an hour including an opportunity for a short question and answer session.