It's not exactly the Globe Theatre, but a subway car works just fine for Shakespeare.
Taking literally the Elizabethan playwright’s adage that “all the world’s a stage,” Brooklyn-based actors Paul Marino, 29 years old, and Fred Jones, 26, have been staging selections from Shakespeare’s works in subway trains rumbling beneath city streets.
For 20 hours each week the pair — who also work variously as bartenders, waiters, personal chefs, tutors and plumbers — perform scenes from “Romeo and Juliet,” “Hamlet” and “Julius Caesar.” All their selections from the tragedies come from either Act 3, where the action typically rises, or Act 5, where everyone dies. (Passengers simply aren’t interested in exposition, they say.)
"Shakespeare is something people recognize,” Jones said. “They may think we’re crazy at the start of a performance, but then they recognize it and are comfortable with it.”
The actors typically take home as much as $20 per performance, and the thespians also said they've gone on dates with women they've met during and after performances.
Perhaps they should team up with the guys who perform Jersey Shore lines in the style of Oscar Wilde to form some post-post-post-modern theater troupe.
WATCH Shakespeare on the subway: