When Karl Sikkenga was teaching middle school students, he began writing pared-down scripts of Shakespeare’s plays. He developed a plan to make it easier for his students to understand Shakespeare’s plays by streamlining the Bard without changing the language or meaning of the plays.

“When I had the idea of doing it in community theater rather than in school, I thought if I’m going to do this, I might as well see if it will work or not,” he said.

In 2019, Sikkenga launched Brevity Shakespeare in Ypsilanti with a production of Hamlet in 2019, just as the pandemic hit. When the theater started up again in 2023 with As You Like It, Sikkenga had a clear vision of a new approach to Shakespeare and community theater.

“The idea behind Brevity is threefold,” he said. ”One is we are deep lovers of Shakespeare, but for me, frequently when I’m watching Shakespeare, I don’t have any idea what people are talking about. The language is the most gorgeous and at times the most obscure. When I was doing Shakespeare with secondary students, I started distilling the play, retaining the language, retaining the plot, and telling the stories in ways that we make sure everyone there understands what’s going on at all times.”

Trimming scripts also meant weeding out nonessential characters.

“The other essential piece for Brevity is, of course, we’re a community theater. We don’t have teeny, tiny roles where you walk on, say hello, and walk off again and rehearse for six hours, “ Sikkenga said. “So I’ve consolidated roles where the small roles will often be combined. For example, say The Taming of the Shrew has 10 roles in it—that’s our smallest cast and our largest is 18, but all the roles are meaty, for all the time they put into it.”

Sikkenga’s third essential rule concerns opening Shakespeare to a wider audience by encouraging a more diverse acting company.

“The third essential element of Brevity is that we want Shakespeare to appeal to the community and reflect the community, so our casts are never more than half white people—at least half the roles any time we go on stage, the other half will reflect the diverse community,” he said.

Since the staging of Hamlet, Brevity Shakespeare has presented As You Like It in 2023 and Richard III and Merry Wives of Windsor in 2024. This year’s plays are the comedy The Taming of the Shrew, May 30 to June 8, and the tragedy Othello in October.

Brevity Shakespeare’s version of Taming of the Shrew reverses gender roles. In this version, the dominating Petruchio is named Petruchia and the troublesome Kate is a guy named Nate.

Veronica Long is the director and also directed As You Like It and Richard III.

“It’s fascinating, we learn a lot every rehearsal,” she said. “Taming of the Shrew is a very fun play overall, but it isn’t done very frequently because it is so problematic. It’s about a loud, outspoken woman who gets gaslit into submission, and then she just becomes very subservient and very docile. So that’s very difficult to do. Now, it’s not great the other way either, it’s just very interesting to see the dynamics there. We’ve been playing a lot with just what it takes to go from this very loud, outspoken lead, going from where she’s comfortable to where she’s less comfortable, and having this matriarchal society where the women are in charge.”

Long grew up in a theatrical family. Her mother was a musical theater major at the University of Michigan who resisted pushing her daughter into theater.

“My dad tried to push me into sports," Long said. "My mom didn’t do that with theater, even though I would make up shows with my friends and put them on in the living room, and always do something like that."

Long said that audiences familiar with the play should be fascinated to watch the reversal of roles.

“To see these strong women and these men who get teased as objects, which is a pretty normal thing for women to deal with. It’s not something that’s crazy for us to see, but it’s very different seeing men in that position,” she said.

Long said she tries to make “things as real as possible.” She has been working with the cast to discuss what reversing roles means to them.

“We really discuss how they feel about what we’re doing so that at the end of the show, the characters that get beaten into submission give this monologue about how everybody should treat their spouse. In this case, Nate is talking about being subservient to wives.”

Long said Nate gives up and submits as Kate does in the usual staging.

Del Dillon plays Petruchia, the domineering.

“My job is to be in charge at any time,” she said with a laugh.

She said the play takes a dark turn.

“It becomes this singular goal to break this person, and I’m going to get a bunch of money for it, so it’s going to be awesome,” she said, describing Petruchia’s bet to bring down the troublesome Nate. “This is my first Shakespeare role, and it’s honestly been a huge learning experience and a great time with the cast and just meeting all the different personalities. Honestly, it’s my favorite community theater experience.”

Sikkenga said 20 slimmed-down Shakespeare scripts have been written and more are in the works.

“Taming of the Shrew is by far the most drastic,” he said, “It wasn’t a script I was all the interested in adapting until this idea, and while I was adapting the script a number of those lightbulbs moments occurred and it was, OK, this is where there is a half dozen women who are gallivanting around Italy because their mothers gave them 10,000 ducats for the year, do what you like and they found these two boys they think are interesting, so the dynamic is very different."

Brevity Shakespeare has been moving from venue to venue. Taming of the Shrew will be at the Ypsilanti Performance Space’s Eldon Hall. For Othello, Brevity Shakespeare will be collaborating with PTD Production and will be staged at the Riverside Arts Center, which is the regular venue for PTD.

“Othello is set in the post-Civil War period in the American West, so you had soldiers in the U.S. Army and soldiers from the other army from that war, that’s the setting,” Sikkenga said.

Sikkenga said audiences have been responsive to Brevity’s innovative approach to the Bard.

“I can’t speak for them, but I can say Richard III is one of the few community theater productions that gets standing ovations,” he said.

Sikkenga said that the four plays presented have found an audience and paying customers.

“We’re not spending a lot of money, but we have been able to attract enough people to pay our bills, and we are also priced like movies or less. It’s never going to be very expensive to see a Brevity show. We’re never going to spend a huge amount of money and expect to make a huge amount of money,” he said.

Sikkenga hopes to have a schedule of three Shakespeare plays every year.

Hugh Gallagher has written theater and film reviews over a 40-year newspaper career and was most recently the managing editor of the Observer & Eccentric Newspapers in suburban Detroit. 

The Brevity Shakespeare production of "The Taming of the Shrew" will be presented at 7:30 pm on May 30 and 31 and June 6 and 7, and at 2 pm on June 1 and 8, at the Ypsilanti Performance Space, 218 North Adams Street, Ypsilanti. For tickets and more information, visit brevityshakes.com.