Twin Cities Shakespeare Readers

Musical Settings For Shakespeare: Shakespeare for Drinking

Free Admission but please support the venue by purchasing a drink or two.

Monday, January 5, 2026
9:00 pm - midnight

White Squirrel Bar
974 West Seventh St.
Saint Paul, MN 55102

Music played a crucial role in the original productions of Shakespeare’s plays. We know this because there are over 70 texts that are supposed to be sung. Unfortunately, most of the original music has been lost, but that also provides a chance for current composers to reset the text in a variety of styles, and that’s what we did.

Styles include the Great American Songbook, period correct (i.e., circa 1600), Western swing, glam rock, Scots-Irish folk music, parodies of radio ads from the 1940s, European art song, early 1950s R&B, New Orleans piano ballads, and several other genres, in other words, a little something for everyone.

We don’t know whether to describe this as cabaret on steroids or as something else. It’s not quite a variety show because we don’t have an act with the spinning plates, but you get the idea. Just the right music to accompany a night of drinking at the White Squirrel Bar.

Performers include:
Sarah Callahan
Sophie Caplin
Laura Lentz Landstad
Sarah Zuber
Ken Takata

(A lot) more details and examples can be found at https://kentakata.com.

Thursday, January 15, 2026, 7:30 pm.

Theatre in the Round Players (TRP)
245 Cedar Ave S
Minneapolis MN 55454

"How to Catch Creation"
Written by Christina Anderson

Join us for the final dress rehearsal of "How to Catch Creation". The cost is $5.00 at the door. Cash preferred. NO LATE SEATING.

Play Description:
Griffin, a Black writer who spent over a decade in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, yearns to build a future; Tami, a driven art professor, finds her passion floundering; Stokes, a young painter, searches for creative purpose; and Riley, his partner, is looking for where she belongs. As their stories unfold, these four artists find their lives unexpectedly intertwined — with each other’s and with the life of a black feminist writer from the 1960s. How to Catch Creation weaves past and present in a poetic and profound exploration of what it means to create: art, a life, a family, a world that reflects who we truly are.

There is also a Pay-What-You-Can performance on Monday, January 26, 2026, 7:30 pm.

PARKING:
1. Parking is NOT free at parking meters in the evening.
2. There is a surface parking lot directly across the street from Theatre in the Round, behind The Corner Bar, where the cost is $5.00.
3. You can also park nearby in the ramp of the Courtyard by Marriott Hotel, 1500 Washington Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55454. Remember your license plate and when you are leaving the theater there is a QR code you can scan with your smart phone and only pay $5.50. (Four hour limit at this discounted price.)

There is always a small chance that a performance might be cancelled at the last minute, so call TRP that afternoon to check 612-333-3010, and also check Meetup messages for this event.

Minneapolis Central Library
(Downtown Minneapolis)
300 Nicollet Mall - Room N-202
Minneapolis, MN 55401

There is underground parking beneath the library, off 4th St. S., for about $5. Go in to the Library lobby and then in to the book stacks area. Take the elevator or stairs up to the 2nd floor, then go all the way to the left.

This is a discussion about the play, not a reading or showing of it.

Our special guest for the first half hour of our meeting will be Carla Steen, dramaturg at the Guthrie Theater, so please arrive on time by 6:00 pm.

Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and filthy air.
– Witches, in Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 1

If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly.
– Macbeth, in Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 7

But screw your courage to the sticking place,
And we’ll not fail.
– Lady Macbeth, in Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 7

Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep.
– Macbeth, in Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 2

It will have blood, they say: blood will have blood.
– Macbeth, in Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 4

By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
– Second Witch, in Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 1

Out, damned spot; out, I say!
– Lady Macbeth, in Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1

She should have died hereafter.
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
– Macbeth, in Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5

SYNOPSIS OF PLAY (from the Folger Library)

DOWNLOAD TEXT FOR FREE

FREE VIDEOS - FULL PLAY (YOUTUBE)
• Royal Shakespeare Company (Ian McKellen, Judi Dench) 1979
- 4K definition
- Regular definition
• Folger Theatre and Two River Theater Company 2008
- Part 1
- Part 2
**• GSP Studios **2018

FREE VIDEOS - OTHER (YOUTUBE)
• Animated Shakespeare Classics - “Macbeth” (25 minutes)
• Tim Nance: Shakespeare’s Macbeth Discussion and Summary

KANOPY APP
Download the free app. Then link your library account to it. This will allow you free access to many Shakespeare plays. You can also watch the Shakespeare series “Upstart Crow” for free.

ARTICLES
• Wikipedia: “Macbeth”
• SparkNotes: “Macbeth Themes”
• Macbeth Navigator
• The Play’s the Thing: Essays on Macbeth, Part 1
• The Play’s the Thing: Essays on Macbeth, Part 2
• Digital humanities and Macbeth’s "creepiest" word
• Macbeth - The Supernatural
• Strange Shakespeare: Macbeth and the even weirder sisters
• The Gunpowder Plot and Shakespeare’s Macbeth
• The history of the witches in Macbeth
• Wikipedia: Daemonologie (1597) by King James VI of Scotland (later also James I of England)

LOCAL LIVE PERFORMANCE
• Macbeth at the Guthrie Theater, Minneapolis (Jan. 31 - Mar. 22, 2026)

GENERAL RECOMMENDED RESOURCES
• The Folger Shakespeare Library has free and paid (includes notes) downloadable texts of all of Shakespeare’s plays.
• The Folger Library: Shakespeare Documented has copies of original documents from Shakespeare’s time.
• PlayShakespeare: The Ultimate Free Shakespeare Research
• Podcast: “Approaching Shakespeare”
• Podcast: “Shakespeare Unlimited” Play by Play
• Play On Podcasts
• SparkNotes 101: Shakespeare [Excellent synopses of all the plays.]
• Shakespeare After All by Marjorie Garber [Excellent analysis of all the plays.] Kindle edition only $5.99!

FACEBOOK PAGES
• The Official William Shakespeare Page
• Shakespeare Study Group
• William Shakespeare: His Works and His World

APP
• Shakespeare App

BEST SHAKESPEARE USED BOOK SELECTIONS IN THE TWIN CITIES
• Midway Books, St. Paul
• The Book House, Minneapolis
• James & Mary Laurie Booksellers, Minneapolis
• Magers and Quinn, Minneapolis
• Half Price Books

Ken Takata Ensemble: Musical Settings for Literature

Free Admission

Saturday, January 31, 2026
2:00 to 3:30 pm

George Latimer Central Library
(Magazine Room, 3rd floor)
90 West 4th Street
Saint Paul MN 55102

In this show, we celebrate literary works from William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Paul Verlaine, and other authors. We’re performing musical settings of their texts.

The Austen settings commemorate her 250th birthday and her connection to modern literature and narrative forms. Some of the Shakespeare settings look at the links between both authors.

Other settings suggest ways to stage several of Shakespeare’s plays (Henry V, Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, As You Like It, The Winter's Tale, and more).

The Shakespeare settings also focus on the women in his plays. Only 16 percent of the characters in Shakespeare are female. Meanwhile, often at least half of the audiences who go to see Shakespeare are women. Is it possible to use musical settings to bridge this demographic gap and emphasize the words and perspectives of the women in Shakespeare’s plays?

Performers feature Sarah Callahan, Sophie Caplin, Laura Lenz Landstad, and Sarah Zuber on vocals.

Musical styles include glam rock, Western swing, European art song, early 1950s R&B, Scots-Irish folk music, New Orleans piano ballads, bossa nova, Weimer cabaret, jug band songs, homages to the Second Viennese School, period correct (i.e., circa 1600), parodies of radio ads from the 1940s, and several other genres, in other words, a little something for everyone.