Tomorrow the incredible champions of our Shakespeare Challenge perform A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Toronto Arts and Letters Club @ 7:30pm

Also, tickets are now on sale for The Diary of Anne Frank, back by popular demand.  Visit our website to book tickets and learn more about this wonderful production.

If you desire the spleen, and will laugh yourselves into stitches, follow me. Yond gull Malvolio is turned heathen, a very renegado; for there is no Christian that means to be saved by believing rightly can ever believe such impossible passages of grossness. He’s in yellow stockings!

We still use this phrase today when we want to emphasize how hard or how much we are laughing. To laugh yourself into stitches means to laugh so hard that it hurts. For example, we might say: “George is such a funny storyteller that he had us in stitches the entire night.”

What was the last story or joke you heard that left you in stitches? Share it in the comments!

Here’s a hint: You can join this character and his theatrical friends on Friday February 24th! Tickets are still available for our Shakespeare Challenge fundraiser, featuring an incredible performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. To attend, call (416) 703-4881 or visit our website. Hope to see you there!

Feeling the February blues? Of course, I know that you guys would never try to cheer yourselves up by playing a prank on a friend – but the character who speaks this quotation might…

I will drop in his way some obscure epistles of love, wherein by the color of his beard, the shape of his leg, the manner of his gait, the expressure of his eye, forehead, and complexion, he shall find himself most feelingly personated. I can write very like my lady your niece; on a forgotten matter we can hardly make distinction of our hands.

What play is this from? Who’s speaking? Bonus points: What prank is she/he planning?

Let the guessing begin!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsCe-x-sqNw&feature=plcp&context=C3b6cdb4UDOEgsToPDskJ5QJJng-ajUI5qPOfe4qQN

And be sure to purchase tickets to the wonderful event!

www.shakespeareinaction.org/shakespeare-challenge

Now we are looking forward to the Shakespeare Challenge, happening on Friday, February 24, 2012. If you not have done so yet, be sure to purchase a ticket to this splendid show and gala, and help support our goal of bringing theatre to kids who may not otherwise have access to it. Details can be found here: Shakespeare challenge

The evening also includes a silent auction. Here we are preparing the lovely items for your consideration.

And finally, a video is being put together to showcase the talented actors who have risen to the challenge and who can be seen next Friday in our fun and exhilarating production of Midsummer Night’s Dream!

Were you not able to find those perfect words? It’s not too late. Maybe the Bard can help you out.

Let’s take an oft-quoted line.

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:”

Whisper that in his/her or quote in on bent knee and you are set! Who does not love beign told they are lovelier than a summer’s day?

This quote, from the famous Sonnet 18, has often been held as a great celebration of love. And while it may seem like that, if we take a closer look at this sonnet, we see it is not as sincere as it may seem.

Tune in tomorrow and we will shatter this illusion.

Take a cue from some great Shakespearean lovers:

Be like Ferdinand and carry heavy logs to win her father’s affection.

Or be like Viola and dress as a man in order to help the one you love win the other woman he loves……

Well, maybe Shakespeare is not the paragon of great comic lovers! But the message is: show him/her that you care, that they’re special, and that Valentine’s Day should not be an isolated event.

Valeo!