Earthquake Upheaval at WoW

The arrival of Windows Vista and our discovery of a technical limitation within Excel have led us to begin redevelopment of the Spreadsheet Shakespeare as a web-based application requiring only a browser. We'll return to the market in 2008 with similar-looking products and greatly enhanced capabilities. Much of this site will change, but not our philosophy of inexpensively supporting Shakespeare productions. Meanwhile...

Shakespeare on a Spreadsheet?

The Spreadsheet Shakespeare and the WoW edition of Shakespeare's plays are a system of automated MS-Excel spreadsheet and MS-Word script files: an inexpensive set of tools for the stage manager, production manager, director and even the savvy artistic director of any group putting on Shakespeare's complex plays. William on Web Inc. (WoW) derived its product ideas from the word-processed scripts and simple tables of characters-in-scene appearances that every professional production uses today.

WoW's Spreadsheets and Playscripts can help you at any production level, from national companies playing Shakespeare in rep on multiple stages to your high school's annual play. Only rudimentary computer skills (steering and clicking a mouse) and basic ASM office skills, scissors and Scotch tape are needed to operate the system.

The separate spreadsheet for each of Shakespeare's dramas gives pre-season and pre-production assistance in revealing the bone structure of the play. There's guidance for combining, cutting and casting of lesser roles by showing incompatibilities and clashes. Each carefully prepared, complete WoW playscript helps directors prepare and format their own cut of the text for use by the actors, and backstage departments can enter cues and notes to their own up-to-date versions. These downloaded WoW editions substantially reduce script costs too.

Before the start of rehearsals, Stage Managers can provide visual scene involvement reports from the spreadsheet for each actor or character. Later, the SM can make rehearsal time more efficient by knowing instantly who is on stage, and when, and what can still be rehearsed with other actors when the leading lady has disappeared for a costume fitting!

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