By Maggie Gill-Austern,Staff Writer

FARMINGTON – If you’ve ever wondered what your (male) high school teachers would look like dressed in wigs and scampering around quoting your (least) favorite Shakespeare lines at inopportune moments, while hefting a (fake) sword, you’re in luck.

This weekend, three Mt. Blue High School English teachers will be putting on the well-loved comedy “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged),” by Adam Long, Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield, to raise funds for Mt. Blue Improv group The Curtain Raisers and for the Class of 2008.

Matt Finch, John Logan and Dan Ryder spent eight months learning the multitude of lines in the “Complete Works” for a production they put on last year. “This year we spent eight days” relearning them, said Ryder with a laugh prior to a Tuesday afternoon rehearsal. “It’s still funny,” chimed in Logan.

The 2-hour play spoofs Shakespeare’s plays. While the three English teachers say they chose the work, in part, because “we think Shakespeare can be fun,” they said they chose it mostly because it’s funny.

“I still laugh at Dan and Matt when they do the Nurse and Juliet,” Logan said, “which is kind of ridiculous, because I’ve seen it 25 times.”

While Ryder, Finch and Logan whipped through “Romeo and Juliet,” consolidated Shakespeare’s comedies into a five-minute long, six- or seven-act play, and played the histories as a football game with a crown as the ball, Mt. Blue students filtered into the auditorium, perhaps to see where the shrieking was coming from. By the time intermission was announced, there were a dozen or so people in the audience, and all of them were laughing.

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