Eliyahu Gasson | opinions editor

Good folk of Pittsburgh, lend me thine eyes, for we bring tidings of a wondrous return to the stage, where amidst the revelry, a drunken rogue shall weave delightful chaos, ensuring that laughter and folly reign supreme! Or at least that be their aim.

Sh!t-Faced Shakespeare is returning to Pittsburgh with their uniquely chaotic rendition of William Shakespeare’s comedy “Much Ado About Nothing.”

What separates a Sh!t-Faced production from a typical rendition of Shakespeare’s plays is that one of the actors is drunk at the start of the performance, and a chosen audience member can decide when said actor should have another drink.

“The idea is we basically want to see how much chaos we can create or help facilitate,” said Lewis Ironside, the creator and artistic director of Sh!t-Faced Shakespeare.

But watching somebody “be silly on stage and swear and roll on stage is only funny for about 15 minutes,” he said. “The core of our show is a long form improv game.”

The drunk actor is encouraged to cause problems, even make changes to the story to challenge the sober actors in making the play work.

“What happens if Romeo doesn’t fall in love with Juliet that night? The drunks may make that choice,” Ironside said. “What happens if they kill someone they’re not supposed to kill? What happens if they just decide to absolutely change the plot or the tone or the core of the thing? Will the show become a musical one night? Is it going to become a murder mystery?”

Alex Leondedis has been a cast member for three years. He auditioned after graduating from Boston Conservatory at Berklee.

“The name is outrageous — it seemed like a very interesting job opportunity,” he said. “The casting process was like no other. It was communal, and we all worked together. It was just fun.”

Leondedis has been the designated drunk several times.

“It’s not like getting drunk on your own because you’re getting drunk for a purpose,” he said. “A lot of performers can relate to that feeling of adrenaline when you’re about to perform in a show … that combines with the intoxication in a very fun way … making you feel like you’re not as drunk as you are, and then you knock something over or can’t remember where you are in the play.”

The goal of Sh!t-Faced Shakespeare, according to Ironside, is to have fun, but also to draw younger people into theaters and reintroduce them to material they may have found uninteresting when they had to read it in school.

“People might come and see [our show] and they will see some good Shakespeare around the drunken antics as well and they might leave thinking ‘oh I enjoyed that, I understood more than I thought and I wonder what the real story is like,’” Ironside said.

Ironside and his friend Chris Snelson started Sh!t-Faced Shakespeare in 2010 when they ran a dedicated theater tent with a seating capacity of 160 people at Secret Garden Party music festival in England.

“We’d open up at, like 10 a.m. with kids programming, and we could feature anything from opera to stand ups to magicians to kid’s comedy to straight plays as well,” Ironside said. “We wanted something to headline that space that we introduced ourselves.”

So Ironside and Snelson “dived into a bag of long forgotten ideas and half formed suggestions,” he said. “Sh!t-Faced Shakespeare was the name of something we had written down long ago that we thought would be quite fun.”

From there, Ironside and Snelson commissioned two performances of Shapespeare’s “Midsummer Night Dream.” They drew one of the performers’ names out of a hat and sent them around the music festival with a sign that read “I’m doing Shakespeare, help me get Sh!t-Faced.”

The show started an hour later.

“Unfortunately, that particular actor was given far too much to drink and 15 minutes after we started she passed out backstage,” Ironside said.

An ambulance was called to take the actor to a medical tent, which Ironside said caused quite a scene.

“We immediately thought this was a stupid idea, so we canceled all future shows then and there,” he said.

But the actor was fine, and they did the show the following night to an audience of around 300 people in their 160 capacity tent.

Since then Sh!t-Faced Shakespeare has done nearly 4,000 shows and has toured around America, Australia and the United Kingdom.

Sh!t-Faced Shakespeare’s performance of “Much Ado About Nothing” has a runtime of one hour and 45 minutes and is presented by Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. The show runs from Oct. 2 to Oct. 13. at the Greer Cabaret Theater in downtown Pittsburgh. Tickets can be purchased through trustarts.org.