Dungeons and Shakespeare is a theater show that does what it says on the tin. D&D monsters meet some of literature’s most famous figures, then chaos and combat ensue. It’s an unusual concept for an Edinburgh Fringe performance, but creator Shelby Bond says the marriage is a better match than you might first think.
“People always think it’s a strange idea at first”, he tells Wargamer, “but D&D is all based on myth and legend, and so is Shakespeare”. “It’s swords and sorcery and magic users and spells – I don’t know how it hasn’t been done before.”
Bond tours the world with his comedy shows, with hundreds of Dungeons and Shakespeare performances under his Ren Fair belt. Things began, however, in a more intimate environment – Bond’s home during the 2020 pandemic.
After graduating from London’s Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in 2019, he was “ready to take on the world” of interactive theater. Covid had other ideas. “I thought it’d only be a couple of weeks, and I thought it might be a fun time to finally get together with some friends for some online gaming”, he says. “The campaign went on for two years.”
From there, all it took was an unexpected extra show at a US Ren Fair for Bond to put two and two together. Two being D&D and Shakespeare, of course. “The first show I did had a full audience – that does not usually happen”, he adds.
During a show, Bond acts as a Dungeon Master, inviting audience members on stage to draw cards from a hat. They might become a hero or villain from the Bard’s best plays (complete with stats and alignment), or they might be a monster from deep D&D lore.
The results are endlessly varied. Participants aren’t required to do a full Shakespeare monologue on stage (though Bond says it has happened). In fact, they barely need to know Shakespeare’s plays – or D&D’s rules – at all.
“How do you get people to understand Shakespeare? Well, they just need to understand these are iconic characters with wants”, Bond says. “I want power, I want money, I want love, I want a hug. Once you get into those, the rest of iambic pentameter doesn’t matter.”
Each character card sums up its tragic or comedic character in a single sentence. “With Pericles – and not many people know Pericles – if I just say he’s suffered a lot and wants to get back to his family, that’s enough”, Bond tells us.
This, combined with a few basic ability scores, gives the audience enough agency to create memories. “At one show, I had a wonderful person playing Pericles”, Bond says. “At the end of the show, there was a field of Black Pudding on stage – which was about 30 kids making noises – and I saw an older couple in the audience.”
“I asked if they’d want to play Pericles’ family, and they got on stage shouting “son, come home!” And then he rolled a four and died horribly.”
If you couldn’t tell, Dungeons and Shakespeare isn’t too concerned about sticking to canon. Interactive improv, however, is more fitting with Bardic tradition than you might think.
Bond tells us “at the time, people were screaming at the stage” during the early performances of Shakespeare’s plays. “It was for the commoner, and it was active”, he adds. “It was made to be alive, and what could make something more alive than the chaos of D20?”
“I don’t want to take Shakespeare down a peg, but I like making it raw and getting back to the basics of the stories and these incredible trials the characters go through”, he says. “Instead of fighting their way through family or fairies, they’re up against a Red Slaad.”
Bond isn’t just introducing Shakespeare to a new audience with these shows; D&D’s audience is expanding, too. “A lot of people have come to me and said ‘last year we saw your show – now we’re playing a campaign'”, he tells Wargamer. “It’s beautiful to see that gaming has gotten so big.”
Bond’s passion for gaming and Shakespeare are evident. He takes great joy in assigning DnD classes to his favorite characters. Cordelia is a clear Druid, Lady Macbeth dabbles in dark spellcasting, and Kate from the Taming of the Shrew would definitely be a Barbarian. We discuss turning The Tempest into a campaign, and it sounds suspiciously like a Curse of Strahd game – with a limited map and Prospero as our sympathetic captive villain.
These shows aren’t about Bond and his nerdy passions, though (something he says he loves about the show’s structure). Instead, it’s about letting the audience explore classics in a new way – with the dice deciding what happens.
You can next see Dungeons and Shakespeare at the Edinburgh Fringe festival in early August. If you’d like to chat more about D&D and stories, you can also join the Wargamer Discord.
Source: Wargamer
