Acorn Productions Brings 'Lost' Shakespeare Plays To Life

Acorn Productions, producers of the Naked Shakespeare series, presents "Apocrypha," an evening that brings to life selection from plays that have been newly discovered to have Shakespeare's words in them. In this combination presentation and performance, audience members will have the chance to decide for themselves whether they agree with scholars that these pieces were written by the Bard. Although most people consider the 36 plays published in the First Folio to be Shakespeare's body of work, new computer programs have been able to identify language in several other plays that appear to be also authored either fully or in part by Shakespeare. The evening highlights the nature of Shakespeare's writing process, as well as bringing to life scenes and soliloquies from four plays, which are now considered to include many sections written by Shakespeare.

Performances of "Apocrypha" take place on Friday, April 13th and Saturday, April 14th at 7:30pm in the Ballroom at Mechanics Hall in Portland.

Both performances are pay-what-you-can, with a $10 suggested donation. More information is available at www.acorn-productions.org.

During the course of the evening, the company shares information known about four plays and why scholars consider them to be works in which Shakespeare had some authorship. Over the past two decades, plays from Shakespeare's era have been analyzed for structure and content, a process that has already resulted in the addition of the play Two Noble Kinsman to the canon. Modern scholars continue to run computer programs to analyze anonymous scripts from the late 16th and early 17th century in order to look for digital fingerprints of Shakespeare's style. "Apocrypha" compiles several well-known studies of these mysterious plays into an evening that features selections determined by Naked Shakespeare's ensemble to most likely contain a touch of the Bard. The four plays explored in "Apocrypha" are Edward III, an early history play that some editors have already begun adding to their complete works editions, Double Falsehood, a play from the early 18th century whose adaptor claims is the lost play The History of Cardenio, The Second Maiden's Tragedy, another contender for Cardenio, and Sir Thomas More, which contains several revisions in Shakespeare's handwriting. "Apocrypha" concludes Naked Shakespeare's 2017/18 season of performances in the historic ballroom at Mechanics Hall in downtown Portland.

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