ACTING SHAKESPEARE TRAINING

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There are many facets to acting Shakespeare.Many clues to acting Shakespeare are in the text itself, put there deliberately by the author.  It’s as if the Bard continues to direct his plays even now but only to the extent the actors follow his notes as embedded or encoded in the text he wrote.  For example, he generally wrote in a poetic rhythm or pattern consisting of a series of alternating stressed and unstressed syllables called iambic pentameter.  The text was written in lines of a certain length determined by the number of syllables in the line of text. Any exception or variation in the pattern, such as in the number of syllables in the line, the pattern of stressing, or whether the line ends in a vowel or consonant signal an acting direction. There are a finite number of the type of exceptions or variations that can appear.   In the context of the play and what is happening in the scene, and the nature of the characters, the exception or variation signals a clue to the actor as to how to respond to what has just happened, or is happening, or is about to happen.

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In addition to the acting clues Shakespeare gives in his plays, there are exercises to train the mind to plumb the meanings of the text, and exercises to open the heart to the multifarious emotions evoked by the poetry.  In addition, there are exercises of voice and gesture for the body to convey meaning in its own language. Michael Chekhov’s psychological exercises, among others, help develop the these skills through imagination.