Kill Shakespeare: Live Stage Reading makes American Convention Debut at NYCC 2012

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Toronto, Canada: Fresh off playing to packed and enthusiastic audiences in Tucson and Montreal last month, an abridged version of Kill Shakespeare: The Live Stage Reading – based on the successful IDW Publishing comic book series - makes its American comic convention debut this upcoming Saturday at the New York Comic Con.

The show will run on Saturday, October 13^th at 11am on the Variant Stage and will be free for any New York Comic Con attendee.

Adapted by comic creators Anthony Del Col and Conor McCreery, Kill Shakespeare: The Live Stage Reading provides viewers with a unique mixture of comic art, radio-play-style drama, music, and audience interaction.

“I think fans of the Bard, fans of comics, and especially fans of fantasy adventure or literary mash-up tales like Kill Shakespeare are going to have a great time,” says McCreery. “The show is unlike anything else you’ll find at comic-cons and the ability for audience members to play a part is something that has gone over really well.”

The stage show will be produced in association with New York’s acclaimed Gideon Productions. Artistic director Jordana Williams will direct a special one-hour version of the show and feature some of New York’s top up-and-coming theatrical talent.

"Most of the actors and I started out doing classical theater, then moved into wilder, pulpier, more experimental stuff,” says Jordana Williams who will direct the show for Gideon. “Kill Shakespeare is all that and a bag of chips, and we're having the time of our lives. I think New York is going to love it!"

New York will mark the fourth stop on Kill Shakespeare’s North American tour having played to full houses in Toronto, Tuscon and Montreal before finishing 2012 in Rochester and capped by an eight show performance in Halifax. In 2013 shows are already booked for Chicago, Toronto and Dubai, with stops at other conventions in the works.

About the show:

Kill Shakespeare: The Live Stage Reading is a 90-minute interactive stage show that highlights projected images of comic art from the Kill Shakespeare graphic novels and involves actors reading the dialogue as if in a radio drama. This format allows audience members to watch performers improvise music and foley live on-stage. The show also encourages audience participation. The play was originally commissioned by Toronto’s Young Centre for the Performing Arts and performed by the acclaimed Soulpepper Theatre Company in fall, 2011.  Soulpepper Theatre’s Toby Malone has served as dramaturge for the piece. 

About the series:

Kill Shakespeare is an adventure story that pits all of Shakespeare’s greatest heroes (including Hamlet, Juliet, Falstaff, Othello, Puck) against the Bard’s most menacing villains (including Richard III, Lady Macbeth, Iago) in a quest to track down and kill – or save – a reclusive wizard by the name of William Shakespeare.  The third installment of the tale will start hitting comic shops in February 2013. The series was nominated for a 2011 Harvey Award for Best New Comic Series and 2011 and 2012 Joe Shuster Awards for Comic Writing. The series has been covered by NPR, BBC, The Washington Post, CBC and The New York Times. In October 2011, Kill Shakespeare was chosen by the Sundance Institute as one of six projects for the inaugural New Frontiers Story Lab.

More information about the series can be found at www.killshakespeare.com.