CHAPTER 35
Session Five: The Last Session
In this session: Transition day • Working speeches with all skills • Running speeches without concentration on skills · Pronouns • The right voice • Lowering the voice • Nervousness • Final evaluations • Actors’ comments · Coach’s notes
Dude has again listed the skills vertically on the white board, the same as session four. Michael is absent due to family issues. Dawn is present. Before we begin, I slip each actor their promised Benji. They are pleased.
Joan: I’m sad this is over.
Dawn: Me too.
Coach: We have a table reserved for pizza after the class. Let’s all go and have a drink together. It’s a “thank you” from us for joining our workshops. I’m wearing my Shakespeare necktie today. Dude and I bought this at a little gift store in Stratford, England, Shakespeare’s birthplace and home of the Royal Shakespeare Company. When I was digging this tie out of the closet, I just happened to look at the back of it. Guess what it says right there.
Dawn: “Casper, Wyoming.”
Mike: “Made in China.”
Coach: “You’re close.”
Marilyn: “Made in the Philippines.”
Coach: “Made in America.” (All laugh.) I buy this souvenir of the RSC in Stratford, and the tie is made in America.
Joan: It was meant to be.
Coach: Dude and I did a Shakespeare workshop on Wednesday to her PEO group—read some verse, explained it, read some sonnets. They were very appreciative. Twenty-five women.
Joan: No wonder you enjoyed it.
Dude: He had twenty-five women in love with him.
Coach: Come on, I’m nearly eighty years old.
Dude: So are they! (Lots of laughs.)
Coach: Here’s the path for today. Because she missed last time, Dawn needs to run her lines with us listening for each of the skills. Dawn, do the speech slowly, using all the skills. This is a rehearsal exercise, not performance. Later today, we’ll all do our speeches any way we want to—just as we feel them and not worrying about the skills. But for now, run your lines using all of the skills. The other actors will have assigned skills to listen for.
After Dawn catches up, we’ll begin the transition day. Do your speeches as if you’re at an audition, or in a show, or anything you want. Forget the skills. Your muscle memory will bring back many of them automatically, but they won’t get in the way of your work—so just do it. We will give you notes, you consider, then we’ll do the speeches for the last time—any way you want. You can even do your speeches over pizza if you wish. I hope we finish in time to do one of the imagery exercises. If not, we’ll get together another time.
Dawn begins her speech. Everyone has a skill to listen for.
Dawn: (Starts and stops.) Did you notice my clothes today? (We all comment.) My husband’s work shirt. I’m in character!
Coach: You’re rushing, please slow down.
Dawn continues with the speech—very nicely—she is working the skills.
Coach: Overall, you continue to rush. You don’t seem to understand phrasing, but you were absent that day.
Dawn: Yeah, I’m guessing on that.
Coach: Comments.
Each actor points out the places where she properly uses the skills and when she misses one. Mike points out the phrasing problem and lack of caesuras.
Coach: The audience can’t understand the language as fast as you can speak it. You must all deal with that.
Dawn: So you guys can hear my brain switching topics.
Coach: If you can’t do this—can’t read at correct tempo—and I’m in your audience and am new to Shakespeare, there is no way I’m with you. I’m gone by line four. Plus, you still don’t know exactly who the character is. The girl is trying to figure what looks to be a puzzle. What does that have to do with rushing?
Zach: Listening to myself, making myself go slowly, makes me think I’m really going slow.
Coach: But right then you weren’t. That was a good tempo.
Zach: I felt I was really slow.
Joan: Breath marks. I had trouble keeping up with you and understanding. I need time to process. You’re not breathing deeply, so I don’t have time to hear it all. The “poor lady” line—I didn’t hear any empathy.
Dawn: That will come out later.
Coach: But Dawn, you’re excited and trying to be in performance mode, but we don’t want you in performance mode—that’s for later in the day. We want to hear the skills obviously applied.
Joan: I just need you to breathe.
Dawn: If I hyperventilate, I’ll fall over.
Zach: We’ll catch you—and you’re on a soft carpet.
Marilyn: I got the feminine endings on “lady,” “distractedly,” and a few others.
Dude: You can drop those final sounds completely. Just say “lady,” “dearly,” etc. I also have some antithesis: “man,” “lady.” Note “thoughts distractedly.” You might want to “look” for the word, which will slow you down.
Coach: Dawn, the direction there would be to search for how she spoke to you—“distractedly”—which, by searching for the word, slows you down.
Dude: Another antithesis: “sighs” and “breathes.”
Coach: Dawn, check your third line. (She reads it slowly.) “My lord’s ring”—you threw it away. Try it again. (She gets it right.) Is there a trochee in the last line, “What will become of this?” (She considers it.) Okay, do it again. No notes this time. (Dawn runs it again. She’s self-critical and catches most of her problems.)
Coach: Almost never stress pronouns, unless you do so purposely. Most pronouns are assumed. You don’t need them here. Watch film and TV, you’ll hear pronouns misused all the time, and you can say to your husband, “Ugh, did you hear that wrong line reading?”
Dawn reads part of the speech, continues nicely.
Coach: What happened to your breathing?
Dawn: I’m snorting through my nose. (She continues.)
Coach: The tempo right there is almost exactly right. Okay, keep going.
She continues, catching her own omissions and repeating lines until she gets them right.
Zach: When you’re slower, you draw us in. When you’re faster, we skip over it—just like you are.
Joan: The speech is so full of questions, and the pauses allow us to hear you working on the answers.
Zach: The second time you read it, it sounded like words. I listened.
Coach: The skills make it seem like you’re getting it right. Like you know what you’re saying. What’s this speech doing? Give me an action verb.
Dawn: Resolving.
Coach: Okay, so there’s your action and part of your character. She has a list of things to resolve.
Dawn: It will take me awhile to get that.
Coach: You just have no idea who the character is, but that’s okay because we haven’t yet started on character, which is what we’d do if we had five more workshops.
Dawn: Let’s have five more!
Coach: Now, before we go on with our speeches, please open your books to page 37. Let’s look once more at applying these skills to realistic text—Shakespeare’s prose. (Dawn has forgotten her book.) Dawn, if I didn’t love you, I’d invite you to leave. (All laugh.)
Dude: You know he’s kidding.
Dawn: Yeah, but I feel the same way.
Zach reads the Duke’s speech. I ask them to think about end-of-line support. Joan reads and applies that skill. We all hear the improvement. Marilyn reads and adds caesuras. We all hear it. Zach rereads the speech with more skills added. He reads it to me, and I add lines from the listener, so he has to slow down, work to make me understand. It all improves.
Coach: Phrasing is so important when acting anything. Mike, go back and read the Arthur Miller speech on the previous page. (Mike does, applying the skills.) Notice that he is already putting the skills in. Dawn, you read it, put caesuras when you want to help the audience understand what you’re going to say. (She does. All hear it.) Marilyn, you read, and I’ll talk back to you as the listener. (We read it, all hear the difference.) Adding listener lines forces the actor to separate thoughts. The speech becomes more spontaneous, less rhetorical. I’d do that exercise with all of your speeches, if we had more time.
Marilyn: I’ve written here about the pronouns, but also about a question mark?
Coach: You don’t need a question mark on a question—it’s already a question. Joan, read the Duke’s speech. (She does, but she’s rushing.) How about some caesuras to help us out? (She adds some little pauses, and we listen more closely.) Look at Toby’s speech. Dude, read a little of it. (She does.) She keeps the thought going throughout the speech. Because it’s prose doesn’t mean you drop the skills. Mike, are you working on a realistic speech in the melodrama? Please do a little. (He does, from a Christmas story he’s working on.) We all hear you applying the skills. And you’re not going too fast. We all listened.
Okay, now it’s time to read for transition. I’ll even erase these skills written on the board. The skills we worked on are for pre-rehearsal. But now you can read your lines without the intrusion of thinking about skills. We’ll hear all six speeches, twice each. Who wants to go first? Marilyn.
Zach: I heard that if you get nervous, just tell yourself you’re excited because it’s the same nerve base.
Marilyn reads using most of the skills, but it is unclear why she is saying the words because we haven’t yet worked on character or the exact setting of the speech. After Marilyn finishes, I have her lie on her back, beginning to breathe deeply, then reading the lines. Her voices lowers, of course. She works it for a while, relaxing her voice more each time. Everyone hears it.
Coach: When you get excited or nervous, your voice goes up. But now it isn’t.
We take some time to discuss the situation of Portia, Marilyn’s character, at the moment of the speech. She does it again, then she stands, keeps the lower voice, reads it again, and we love it because of her confidence.
Coach: Next time you do it, get your voice placed before you begin. All of you do that.
Dude: Put yourself in the courtroom where Portia gives the speech. It helps to use the setting. (Dude speaks to Marilyn about the courtroom scene in The Merchant of Venice.)
Coach: Let’s take a short break. We’re going to run out of time. I doubt we’ll get to the imagery exercise. We’ll just have to get together again sometime and do it.
Dawn: You know what pisses me off. I spent five years in college and have learned more in five weekend workshops than I was taught in all of my English or theatre classes about Shakespeare. They just burned through it; they said to find the emotion that applies to that line, then you do the line.
Coach: That would be a major mistake. All the emotion in the world won’t make the line any clearer to the listener. You can’t start with the emotion.
Dawn: The other person I worked with was all about character. We never talked about the skills required to read the language.
We take a break. Joan talks to everyone about Philadelphia pretzels, praising the quality. Nobody else had tried them.
Coach: Okay, break’s over, and Mike’s up. We’ll be the audience for his Prologue speech.
He mentions that his voice might go up because he’s nervous. But he does the speech, without over-concentrating on skills very nicely. His work on applying the skills to this speech is obvious; now he’s quite good at it, and it’s a great audition piece for him for the future.
Coach: The next time, tighten it up a little. The way you do that is to shorten the caesuras, etc. Drive your speech toward the end. Let it flow, like a piece of music—like there is no period from word one to the end.
Joan: He’s very understandable.
Dude: He’s smooth.
Coach: It would help if I had had you memorize it; then your focus could be on us. Very nice, Mike. We’ll do it again later. Dawn, you’re up.
Dawn: You just heard this.
Coach: But we’re going to hear something new this time.
Dawn: Indeed.
She runs the Twelfth Night speech. We hear some pronoun problems, but her voice is down and the speech is good.
Coach: You’re reading well; you just don’t quite understand some of the spots in the speech.
We discuss these places. “She loves me sure,” “My Lord’s ring,” “fadge” (no question mark).
Zach: Tempo. At times you were thinking, coming up with things, but then you would speed up, and it would be just words. I love it when you slow down and let us share it with you.
Joan: The antithesis came out that time. I believe she got the note.
Dude: End of phrases. Sometimes you forget to keep the thought going. But overall, so much clearer.
Zach is up. He runs the Henry V speech. He takes his time; we all listen. He still has problems in a few spots, but we listen.
Coach: The word “interred”—and get your voice down a little
Zach: I knew that was coming.
Coach: An actor can often set a vocal checkpoint to make sure the voice is not getting too high. You take a certain word or line and always speak that moment in a certain place in your vocal range. That’s your check. You know right away if your voice has gone up, or if it’s down where you want it. Say the first two lines. (Zach does.) How about the word “steel” as a checkpoint? (He tries.) You need to bring it down.
Zach: I’m a tenor.
Coach: Then maybe a second tenor for playing this role. (We all laugh. He tries again and sets “steel” in a lower pitch for his checkpoint. He does the speech very nicely. Everyone notices. We’re all listening because he’s captured us vocally.)
Dawn: You went from a man praying to a man asking for strength. Very nice.
Coach: Next time—here’s a little character—bargain more with God. You want God to protect you tomorrow. Get him on your side. Persuade him.
Dude: When you get the right voice, you really catch us.
Coach: I’ve worked with lots of actors who haven’t the voice to get the words out there. If you want to be a professional, you take care of that voice. “Chops,” it’s sometimes called. You’ve got the chops. Lie down on the floor if you need to. You heard it happen with Marilyn. You’re relaxed—do whatever you have to do to get your best voice established.
Marilyn: The first lines allow you to let us know you’re talking to a certain God—the part of God that’s interested in battles. Fun to use that.
Joan is up. She runs her Lady M speech. The “remorse” line is still unclear. She runs out of breath on “affect and it.”
Joan: I have to start running—whew.
She finishes up the speech, needs to breathe. She then runs that phrase again, works it in one breath. She’s very strong.
Coach: “To remorse”—work on that line. Don’t let sympathy in.
Dude: Great support. I liked it. Great growth. Strong woman. Just a cold, calculating plan.
Coach: Good work, Joan.
Mike: I really liked how you handled “Duncan.”
Coach: Notice the things we’re all hearing! Amazing. But, we’re about out of time again. Still have round two. Is that everybody? But we won’t have time to do the imagery exercise.
Dawn: Let’s just keep going.
Coach: I have a book deadline—have to transcribe these workshops. Dude, you want to do yours?
All: We want Dude, we want Dude!
Coach: Do it once, then you can start the second round. Just stay right there, we’ll give some notes, then do it again. That’s about all we’ll have time for.
Dude runs the As You Like It speech. “Flattery” is not quite right, but the speech is. All applaud.
Coach: “Made this life”—not quite right.
Dude: Because I’m nervous. The paper is shaking. (All laugh.) One never gets over it, you know.
Coach: Dude, shorten your pauses. Get to the point that “everything is wonderful.”
Dawn: Her emotion does not get in the way of diction or tempo.
Zach: I love “venomous.”
Coach: Okay, Dude, again, final time. All of you, please notice, as we run these speeches for the last time, how far everyone has come—that’s the reward! That’s why you do this.
Joan: In real life, does every word count, like it does here?
Coach: No, this is compressed language. Structured to fit a meter.
Dawn: Less profanity.
Dude runs her speech again, a little more tempo, driving more toward the final line. She really pulls us in. She stumbles because she loses her place on the page, starts again, nobody minds—we like to hear actors make corrections. Everyone likes it. We point out a few words she needs to clarify. All applaud.
Joan runs her Lady M speech again. We’re quite caught up in it, as it makes sense and really pulls us in. She uses an extra breath after “purpose,” and it works. All applaud.
Coach: The next thing for you to work on—for example, if you wanted to do this speech for an audition—is to imagine two guards pacing in the background. That will make the speech less melodramatic, more confidential with the audience. It’s wonderful to listen to you work.
Mike: Great caesuras.
Dawn: She used them for emotional changes.
Coach: Yes, you can hear the character developing.
Zach runs his Henry V speech. He uses the checkpoint word and line to get his voice down. We like it. All applaud.
Coach: Really nice growth. You were rationalizing with God this time, which made it younger and less kingly. But we haven’t worked on character yet, so I should shut up with these kinds of notes. But if you want to work on this speech, get him to win God over—and that will take away the youthful feeling. Getting your voice down, as for an audition, is a good challenge for you.
Dawn: He slowed it down, I could hear every word.
Joan: You got a nice flow out of it.
Zach: I stressed a pronoun a little. Is that okay?
Coach: Yes, you used them intentionally.
Dawn: There is an exception to everything in Shakespeare.
Dawn runs her Twelfth Night speech, misses a little on “I am the man,” not making it an immediate discovery. It’s a little desperate rather than unraveling a situation. But it’s very good, we all like it, and all applaud. Dawn decides to use “churlish” in her next vocal exercises.
Coach: You took a huge step in the last half hour. (All agree.) She doesn’t know quite what Viola’s saying in a few places, but we haven’t gotten to character yet. That would be next.
Joan: She got the antithesis working—I really enjoyed that.
Marilyn runs her Portia speech. It’s very solid. Lots of applause. Everyone likes it.
Coach: Okay, Mike, finish it all up with a Prologue. That’s fitting.
Mike run his Romeo and Juliet Prologue. The growth is phenomenal. Everyone applauds. They are seeing what these skills allow you to do as an actor.
Dude: Mike’s next step is to memorize, so he can look at us during the speech. Wes and I watched Shakespeare in Love again. (Dude explains about the stuttering actor who does this speech in the film.)
Coach: “Could not remove”—use the comma, not a period. (Mike gets it.) And have vocal fun with the rhyming couplet at the end. (He does.)
Dawn: That speech sets up the entire play.
Coach: And today, it was the end. It was wonderful doing these workshops with you. I learned more than you did. I learned a lot about community theatre. Thanks to you all. “Thanks, and again thanks.” Let’s go celebrate.
We close up the space and head for the pizza place to toast our work together and have a million laughs. This was a great group that I won’t forget, and I promise everyone a copy of the third edition, when it’s published next summer.
Two weeks after the final workshop, I emailed each of the actors and asked them to send a short reply to this question: In the future, how will you make use of the skills you acquired in these workshops? Here are their answers.
Joan Davies: I was delighted and excited to have been chosen to be a member of the Shakespeare Class in Casper this past fall. I’ve had no formal acting training but was hit HARD by the bug after being cast in a show three years ago. Since then, those I’ve worked with in community theatre and at the college have been most helpful and guided my growth as a member of several productions since. All the while, I’ve longed for more formal training to understand the basics and build my skills on a strong foundation. This opportunity was just what I had been looking for.
By the end of the first meeting, I knew the following to be true: 1) Wes was a respected director in theatre; 2) he knew what we needed to do to learn how to prepare for Shakespeare; 3) this was the real deal; 4) this was the foundation for which I was looking; 5) this was going to take a commitment to reap the benefits I wanted; 6) this process was going to take time; and 7) if I followed the process and did the practice, my skills would increase not only with Shakespeare, but also in any role I was to play in the future.
The play Steel Magnolias (I was playing Clairee) at a community theatre ran concurrently with this class. What I learned in class had a positive impact on my preparations of that role and to my understanding of what the audience needed from me. Additionally, the “don’t memorize until it’s ready” suggestion is helping me memorize for my upcoming vocal recital. I approached my voice teacher, after making this memorization connection between acting and solo-singing performance, and she too completely concurred, saying “Absolutely, don’t memorize until you understand the lyrics, inflections, dynamics, meaning, and nuances you want in your performance. Don’t memorize until the piece is ready to be memorized.” What an “a-ha!” moment.
The class and book [Clues to Acting Shakespeare, Second Edition] helped me prepare with more assurance, knowing what I was doing was the “right way” to practice. My regrets are but two: 1) I was not able to dedicate the time between classes as I had hoped due to professional and family commitments, and 2) we needed an additional five sessions to take our speeches to performance.
Like I said, this was the real deal. Thank you, Wes and Dude, for your time, dedication, commitment, honesty, and genuine spirit.
Zach Becker: This workshop was a learning experience from the time I walked in the door until the time the workshop was over. I remember studying some Shakespeare in a high school English class and was familiar with the storylines of some of the plays, so I had that in my bag. I have had no training as an actor, acted as a child, and have done a few plays as an adult, so I came in like a sponge ready to learn.
In these workshops, I became familiar with the structure of Shakespeare, which words to stress or not stress and why, and how to take a page written in another time period and apply the skills to make it understandable and impressionable. This also helped me to enjoy Shakespeare a little more. Even learning some basic things like stressing verbs and not stressing pronouns helped me focus and add meaning to the text.
This workshop has helped me understand the importance of really looking at the text and dissecting it, finding the meanings, antithesis, important words, understanding phrasing, and applying the skills to make the words more relevant to the listener. Before the workshop, I usually began working with the storyline and thinking about the character. The next time I’m in a play, I will look at the text more closely and give it the attention it is due, rather than skipping it and focusing solely on character.
I am currently teaching first grade, and reading aloud is my favorite time of day. I get into character, use voices, and we have fun with it. At intense parts in a story, sometimes I speed up to show excitement or intensity. My students may get the gist, but I’m probably talking a little too fast, and they probably aren’t catching the meaning. Through my experience with the workshop, I’m slowing it down and trying to use other ways rather than speed to show an intense moment. I focus on the important words to stress or maybe take pauses at specific times for effect. I will use what I’ve learned in the workshops in both the classroom and the next play I am a part of.
Marilyn Mullen: Even though I am not an actor, I do have two English degrees and was smitten by the Bard early in life. Thus did I beg my way into the Shakespeare workshop, which was not only a great deal of fun, but for the first time ever, I feel equipped to read Shakespeare aloud. I am equipped also to understand how and why these plays are sometimes easy and sometimes difficult to follow on the stage. All this was a great gift to me!
Mike Bardgett: I thoroughly enjoyed the Shakespeare workshops and felt honored to be asked in the first place! I wasn’t familiar with most concepts; for example, heightened text, blank verse, scansion, phrasing, caesuras, trochees or elision—just to mention a few. I now understand all of these concepts and more (as well as how they relate to acting), especially when speaking heightened text. The teaching style of Wes and Dude was relaxed, lively, entertaining, and challenging.
I believe my skill set as an actor has been greatly enhanced due to this workshop. As a result, I will use each of the skills obtained in all future auditions and roles. Inspired by these newfound skills, as well as the encouragement of the instructors, I now feel not only confident, but also capable of auditioning for more challenging roles in more skilled venues of performance. Even though we only covered the first fifty pages of Clues to Acting Shakespeare, I have been inspired to read and study the entire book and to build on the skills learned in the workshop. I am greatly indebted to the instructors for using me in these workshops.
Dawn Anderson-Coates: I will say I have always had a love of reading Shakespeare and loved taking Shakespearean classes throughout college. When I was asked to participate in this workshop, I thought it would be a great experience to brush up on my somewhat rusty skills to put to use in our local community theatre. But I learned so much more than expected. I learned that most of what I had been taught was incorrect. I simply knew the very basics, and this was a chance to relearn and grow my skills. I am not what you would call a very easy person to teach. I get somewhat settled in my ways and continue to proceed down the path I think is correct, even if it veers off the map entirely.
Wes and Dude brushed up my basic understanding of iambic pentameter, but also trochees, feminine endings, breath control, antithesis, and so much more. Wes brought me back onto the map and showed me the simple beauty I had missed all along. Shakespeare was a fascinating man to be sure, but he was a genuine genius with the written word. I learned preparation of the words was vital to performing Shakespearean works, and without proper preparation, you can butcher the simple elegance of his plays, much to the dismay of all.
Each technique Wes taught should be standard learning for anyone to read Shakespeare, let alone perform it. He had to completely unteach everything I had learned and start fresh, which was a true feat indeed! But he managed it beautifully, and now my knowledge of the Bard has improved 100 percent. I am currently rereading my Complete Works with fresh eyes and a new appreciation for dedicated Shakespearean performers.
I myself will use many of these techniques every single day. The one that stands out most is learning to slow down my speech, take my time with each word, and convey my thoughts from brain to mouth in a much more eloquent manner. This will greatly improve my ability to make speeches at work as well as converse with friends and strangers alike. Not to mention working on my breath control, not only when speaking, but to improve my lung capacity as a swimming instructor. I cannot thank Wes and Dude enough for all they have done to show me how beautiful language could be, and their patience and kindness in bringing me so much closer to Shakespeare’s works. This was truly a wonderful workshop.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
Teaching five Shakespeare workshops to community theatre actors, we gained an overview of probable situations many community theatres may face under the same circumstances. General reactions are first, followed by the specific.
Primarily, the director’s inability to control the environment—i.e., no contract, payment schedule, or grading of the actors—allows for actor absences, which is a killer for a rehearsal or training schedule. Secondly, the community theatre actor may be unfamiliar with the value of training, as the mindset may be “I do this for fun, social time, and as a hobby.” That actor sees little need to improve. The actor may not know how to read a script, work out the plot, or a specific character’s position in that plot—and may be embarrassed when expected to accomplish one of these tasks.
Should the community theatre decide to produce a work that is written in classical or heightened text, some training of the actors will likely be required. Even professional theatres add training time when producing a classical play. After participating in these Shakespeare workshops, Dude made the suggestion that preparation for the Bard’s plays is not unlike working on a musical. She suggests that directors make “training time” part of the rehearsal schedule, just like dance or music time in a musical rehearsal schedule. The actors will accept this schedule as a simple necessity to producing the play that is in rehearsal. This approach to learning the skills differs from a professional production approach because, in the latter case, the skills would be learned in pre-rehearsal training sessions. Our five community theatre workshops followed the professional approach, but we found it difficult to recruit actors willing to spend time just learning skills. Dude’s idea of combining the training sessions with rehearsal days should work better.
The basic goal should be to learn at least four of the skills, which makes the use of these four skills simply a part of rehearsing the play. Dude suggests two training sessions each week for the first three weeks of rehearsal—enough time to learn the four basic skills—then working in other skills as the need for them is discovered in the text. The first four basic skills are scansion, end-of-line support (kicking the box), phrasing, and breathing. After these skills are in use, slip in antithesis and other helpful understandings of the classical text.
We discovered that community theatre actors who are willing to be trained become extremely involved in the practice, to the extent they have the time. They quickly realize supplemental benefits from the skills being taught—i.e. using these techniques with realistic text, using the skills in their jobs, and that this kind of training is great fun and produces highly rewarding results.
For Directors Using this Book
We suggest you read through these five community theatre workshops, then refer to the epilogue and read the notes from the actors and from us, then just plunge in! Teach yourself the skills; then learn how to teach them to your actors. Think of yourself as the coach, even if self-taught. Self-teaching works! Have everyone learn at least the first four basic skills; don’t just assume these skills won’t be helpful to your production. Be the leader. Example is a beautiful teaching technique.
For Actors Using this Book
Read through the five workshops, pick a speech, follow the notes, and then work on that speech as was done by the community theatre actor in the workshop. Do the related exercises, even if you have to teach yourself. Self-teaching from this book works. Don’t be frightened by these skills. Do the exercises and see what amazing results develop. You can speak this language! Just follow the path these five actors followed.
Actors and Directors
To work on these skills and self-teach from the exercises, get one friend or partner and practice just the one skill: end of line support. This is the “kick-the-box” exercise (session one). Master that one skill, and you’ll immediately see amazing results in your line readings.
Here’s what to do: Select a line or two. Read the line aloud but very badly by dropping the ending as if you ran out of breath. Ask your partner what the line said. Then do the line again, this time kicking the box on the final syllable. Do not kick on the final word, but on the final syllable. Ask the partner what the line said. Do this exercise with others present, and everyone will hear the difference. All will want to try it, so work on this skill for a while.
After you have the line supported, work on the second skill: scansion. Put the line on a board, find the feet, mark the stressed syllables, then read the line emphasizing the stressed syllables. You will find the rhythm to blank verse. Then you can pull back and just read the line naturally, but with the ending supported. The stresses will take care of themselves.
Take a line or two and experiment with phrasing and breathing (sessions two and three). The exercise is easy, but the results are amazing. Take some time to learn how to breathe at the punctuation points and how to separate phrases. Then put it all together with four or five lines. Have someone read these lines badly, for all to hear, then apply the four skills and read the lines. You can do this, your Shakespeare can be beautiful, and more importantly, it will be understood by the audience.
When you come to a problem, just say “I don’t know! But let’s make some choices and try them.” Do that, and your good ear will tell you what is the best choice. That approach will also pull everyone in to help.
All 7,000 community theatres in America and those overseas can have fun with Shakespeare. If coaches are not available, self-teach, become self-taught, and then teach the skills to others. It’s exciting to do and so rewarding. The actors we worked with on these workshops had little or no training in doing classical plays, but they learned the skills and applied them to a Shakespearean speech. After five workshops (or call them get-togethers, rehearsals, pizza parties, or whatever), they read the speeches and were ready to seriously rehearse. The speeches were excellent, and we don’t hand out that compliment easily.
Let them practice and converse with spirits
HENRY VI, PART I, II, i