Playing Shakespeare
Wednesdays 20th & 27th September, 4th, 11th and 18th October 2023
6.30 - 9.30pm
About the Course:
This very special course takes a deep dive into playing Shakespeare. Five sessions, five expert tutors, each of whom will delve into a different aspect of the work, opening up the language and empowering you to connect with character and situation to create truthful, contemporary performances.
Week 1: Working with Verse - Dan Winter
Everything you need to be able to play as a performer with Shakespeare’s text. A practical look at all the important and often overlooked basics. Practical and useful tips on how to approach text. Being understood easily by an audience, and feeling engaged with the character and dialogue is fundamental to a great experience with Shakespeare’s verse or prose, whether you’re experienced or it’s your first time.
Week 2: Shakespeare the Director - Jennifer Higham
Delving into the text in a dynamic and practical exploration, we discover that Shakespeare not only tells a magnificent story and builds characters that are a dream for actors to get their teeth into, but he also directs the actor on how to deliver his text - what rhythm and emotional dexterity are needed for the scene, the game of status and more. If you know how to read into the text, you discover that Shakespeare makes it easy for the actor to deliver his work in a way that will have the audience on the edge of their seat, grabbing them and reeling them in, just through the power of his words.
As well as her role as Co-Director of The Actors’ Workshop, Jen is also UK producer for Actors from the London Stage, a Shakespeare company that tours the U.S.A twice a year, taking uncut plays and only 5 professional actors playing all the parts with little to no set, just using Shakespeare’s writing as the star of the show. Jen will be drawing on this style of classical work in her workshop also.
Week 3: Cue Scripts - Alice Barclay
Using cue scripts as actors did in Shakespeare’s time encourages spontaneity, & listening & empowers actors to make quick choices & follow impulses. We’ll use these scripts to explore scenes from Macbeth & to find that precious sense of being truly connected to other actors on stage & to the moment. Giving focus to the other people in the scene & never quite knowing what is going to happen next, just as in ‘real life’, we’ll discover ways of smoothing out the seam between ourselves & these extraordinary characters so that they speak to us & the world we live in now. We’ll move away from anything that feels like it exists in the past or belongs to the ‘tradition’ of Shakespeare, & speak his words with our own voices, from our own bodies, for our contemporary world.
Week 4: Rhetoric and the Art of Persuasion - Clara Marullo
Classical Rhetoric, the key component of an Elizabethan education, is a system for exploring how words can be used to influence others. Understanding how Shakespeare uses this system offers a powerful tool for playing the text in performance, revealing new clues about situation, character, intention and power. Through exercises and high-stakes scenes from the plays, we will investigate how to use language to get what you want, even when the cards are stacked against you….
Clara is Co-Director of The Actors’ Workshop. More about Clara here
Week 5: Who Do You Think You Are? Creating a Character in Shakespeare - Alan Coveney
.So, you’re rehearsing a Shakespeare scene or, if you’re lucky, the whole play. You know something about verse speaking, about Elizabethan England, and the conventions of sixteenth century theatre. But who is this character you’ve been cast as? How do you play them? What do you actually do?
Alan Coveney has been a habitué of Bristol’s theatre scene since he moved to the city in the 1980s to do a season at the Bristol Old Vic. He has produced, directed and acted in many diverse, award winning productions, including the world premieres of Peter Nichols’ Blue Murder, and the rediscovered eighteenth century comedy A Busy Day by Fanny Burney, as well as the English premieres of modern Australian classics like Louis Nowra’s The Golden Age and Nick Enright’s Good Works. He was also instrumental in opening The Tobacco Factory as a theatre space, braving the pigeons and the bitter cold to direct the very first season of plays and readings in 1999.
For over ten years Alan was a regular performer with nationally renowned Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory, performing in twenty productions, including Othello, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, King Lear, Henry V and The Comedy of Errors. He also performed and directed a number of times at the Alma Tavern with Theatre West as part of their new writing seasons.