The Reduced Shakespeare Company (RSC) is an American touring acting troupe that performs fast-paced, seemingly improvisational condensations of different topics.
The company tours in the US and UK, and has performed in Belgium, Netherlands, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China, Singapore, Barbados, Bermuda, Israel, Qatar and Ireland.
[citation needed] The company was founded in 1981 by Daniel Singer, who wrote a 25-minute, four-actor version of William Shakespeare's Hamlet, to be performed at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Novato, California.
Crowds were amazed to see two men arrive with a small basket of costumes, two fencing foils, two bottles of poison, a rose, a dagger, a wig and a dummy, and proceed to enact the entire story with the zany style of a Marx Brothers movie.
The Complete Works script that resulted from these collaborations successfully premiered in an open-framed barn at the Paramount Ranch in Agoura, adjacent to the site of the Southern California Renaissance Faire.
In August 2005, at the Sebastiani Theatre in Sonoma, California, the Reduced Shakespeare Company recorded its second show on DVD, The Complete History of America (abridged).
Martin and Tichenor's second book, Reduced Shakespeare: The Attention Impaired Reader's Guide to the World's Best Playwright (abridged) was published by Hyperion in 2006.
In 2010 Martin & Tichenor reduced the first five season of the hit television series Lost into a comical ten minutes for Sky TV in Britain.
The Complete World of Sports (abridged) by Martin and Tichenor debuted 2010 and has also toured across the USA and Great Britain with runs at the New Victory Theater in New York City, the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, and the Arts Theatre in London.
This decision led to tremendous public outcry and show support for the RSC from many sources including Richard Dawkins, Tim Minchin, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Amnesty International.