Directors Mitchell Cushman and Weyni Mengesha are hardly Shakespeare purists.

That neither of the young directors felt concerned about keeping every word of the playwright’s work afforded them a greater sense of freedom in co-directing veteran Stratford actor Graham Abbey’s adaptation of four Shakespearean histories into a single, two-part production, Cushman said.

Breath of Kings: Rebellion, which amalgamates the plays Richard II and Henry IV, Part 1 and Breath of Kings: Redemption, which merges Henry IV, Part 2 and Henry V, are on until Sept. 24 at this year’s Stratford Festival.

About a year ago, Abbey approached Mengesha, who’s in her 30s and is the great-granddaughter of former emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie, and Cushman, 30, who is Jewish, to come on board.

Shown in two individual three-hour instalments, the plays can be viewed separately, but the creators recommend that theatregoers first see Rebellion, the direction of which was helmed by Mengesha, and then Redemption, primarily directed by Cushman.

Abbey’s adaptation chronicles two decades of English history, from the political takedown of Richard II to the rise to power of Henry Bolingbroke (later Henry IV) to the evolution from scoundrel to leader of “Hal” (later Henry V).

Cushman said Abbey cut roughly half the material from each of the original four plays, rearranged scenes and merged or cut out characters altogether.

Abbey wants to introduce these plays to a new generation, Cushman said. “He hopes that by putting them into one marathon [production]… and by showing the longer arc of the story… something [will get] added to them.”

Part of what’s gained from seeing the histories unfold as a fluid narrative is that certain characters become fleshed out in ways they wouldn’t otherwise.

“Like episodic television, [combining the plays] gave us an opportunity to offer more investment into the characters’ journeys,” Mengesha said.

There is, for example, the character of Sir John Falstaff, who appears in both of the original Henry IV plays, and whose death is mentioned in the original Henry V.

The development and eventual tragic end of Falstaff, a buffoonish figure who typically provides comic relief, is particularly poignant when the drama is condensed.

“You have the opportunity to see Falstaff’s whole friendship with Hal. Later, you see Hal rejecting him, and then you see his death… If you were just doing the Henry IV plays, you wouldn’t get the same payoff,” Cushman said.

The character of Hal, played by Mengesha’s cousin Araya, also undergoes a fascinating evolution over the course of Abbey’s adaptation.

“You get to see [Hal] at first trying to be an everyman, hanging around with lowlifes in the pub. Eventually, he has to subjugate these parts of himself to be a leader. You get to see the trajectory from man to king,” Cushman said.

Another innovation was that Mengesha and Cushman decided early on that they wanted to be “gender blind,” Cushman said, meaning they were intentional about casting both male and female actors in the plays’ predominantly male roles.

“There’s one pretty epic sword battle between two fantastic female actors,” Cushman noted.

More broadly, the directors were interested in how the intense political drama within Richard II, the Henry IV plays and Henry V could be reflected in contemporary politics.

“In today’s political climate,” Cushman said, “it feels like the idea of rebellion is appropriate. You have figures like Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders, figures based on rejecting long-standing ideas and rousing the masses with ideas of change.”

There’s also the theme of the young, attractive leader – think Justin Trudeau or Barack Obama – being expected to usher in a new era of politics, he added.

“Henry V is that young, attractive leader. Having a youth leading [them] feels to people like a page is being turned, that they’re putting a stop to the old ways. But history has a way of repeating itself, of setting up unrealistic expectations,” Cushman said.

For Mengesha, who is the first of her family born in Canada and much of whose extended family was executed or imprisoned in Ethiopia, “doing this story where I follow the life of a young prince turning into a king was fascinating…I was able to reflect on stories I’ve heard growing up in my own family.”