A performance of well-known speeches and lines from William Shakespeare’s plays, sonnets, and period music, “Sonnet and Song: An Evening with Shakespeare,” will be presented Friday, August 17, at 8 p.m., in the Old Gymnasium at Les Cheneaux Community Schools in Cedarville. Attendance is free.

The original performance, conceived and directed by Cedarville High School graduate Stephen Murray, focuses on the text of Shakespeare’s plays. It will feature six actors in mime face in the sparse setting on an Elizabethan-style thrust stage, which is the type of stage used when Shakespeare’s plays were first staged. The performance opens with the familiar lines, “all the world’s a stage,” and continues to explore Shakespeare’s influence on English speaking culture.

“I was inspired to do this to explore the beauty of Shakespeare’s work and to present something different for the community to see,” Murray said.

He described the play as a review of the philosophy behind Shakespeare’s work and the origin of many common phrases used in everyday conversation. A segment of the play, “Everything I Ever Needed to Know I Learned from Shakespeare,” gives a nod to dozens of those phrases.

Murray said he hope the performance will inspire others and open opportunities for future performances like this.

The cast of Friday night’s performance includes area performers Andy Drenth, David, Stephen, and Sarah Murray, and Phillip Quinn, all of Cedarville.

Murray is a student at Northwestern University in Chicago.