REDUCED SHAKESPEARE COMPANY: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S LONG LOST FIRST PLAY (ABRIDGED)
Presented by Butler Arts Presents
The Reduced Shakespeare Company is a three-man comedy troupe that takes long, serious subjects and reduces them to short, sharp comedies. The “Bad Boys of Abridgment” have created nine stage shows, two television specials, several failed TV pilots, and numerous radio pieces – all of which have been performed, seen, and heard the world over.

Discovered in a treasure-filled parking lot in Leicester, England (next to a pile of bones that didn’t look that important), an ancient manuscript proves to be the long-lost first play written by none other than seventeen-year-old William Shakespeare from Stratford. We are totally not completely making this up. William Shakespeare’s Long Lost First Play (abridged) is the literary holy grail: an actual manuscript in Shakespeare’s own hand showing all his most famous characters and familiar speeches in a brand-new story. But because it’s one hundred hours long and contains multiple unwieldy storylines, the RSC decides, as a public service, to abridge it down to a brief and palatable ninety minutes and perform the world premiere of this lost masterpiece.