MISSION STATEMENT

 

The Smoking Mirror Theatre Company is primarily dedicated to producing Shakespeare’s plays in the New York City area.

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To produce good Shakespeare an actor has three very distinct rolls or jobs. He or she must have the scholar’s and philosopher’s ability and willingness to excavate, grasp and convey with real clarity the many layers and profound depth of the meanings embodied in the text, a poet’s understanding and ability to emanate emotional truth and finally, to be a master of the body’s own distinctive language of forms and movement to embody the meanings in the script.

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Another goal of putting up Shakespeare is to be faithful to fulfilling the function(s) of the particular play, as best as we can grasp it, in relation to its intended effect on the audience.  This Shakespeare himself described: the “purpose of playing” is “to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature: to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.”  This is something very specific.  Properly performed the actors’ psychologies as displayed in the play act as mirrors from which the audience members can recognize aspects of their own psychologies—thoughts, feelings and physicality characteristic of our time—and thus learn about themselves as well as the human condition now.

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The mirror described in Hamlet is the theatre, in which audience members can see themselves in the psychology exhibited by the action of the play. This mirror can in turn can be simultaneously experienced or witnessed by alert actors in their own psychology. Thus, both actors and audience members are enabled to see and be seen through the two-way “portal” of the play.   

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Our overall goal is to establish a Shakespeare acting company that fosters these aspirations and as a corollary to provide acting classes that provide the necessary training.