I wasn't getting anything over in methods so I thought I'd try here.
Does anyone have any good advice to help breakdown and understand/convey Shakespeare? I've never done it before and I'm not sure where to start. We have auditions for Othello on Monday.

Shakespeare is such a specific, extensive, and potentially daunting challenge for any actor, that if possible, I would seek out professional instruction dedicated soly to the study of The Bard's body of work.

Seek out the company of actors and/or repertory acting companies specializing in classical theater, as well as the usual collegiate venues. Of course, the ultimate source would be an intensive course in the land of his birth, perhaps one of the many offered at Stratford-upon-Avon, in Warwickshire, England. Hundreds of American students make the pilgrimage every year.

www.robertkim.com

Yeah that's definitely something I should look into eventually, but for right now I need to be pointed in the right direction to get my audition underway.
I'm a little irritated at my director though hah. He told me last year that I'm definitely a contender for Desdemona, but now he's saying he wants fair hair and fair skin. I'm about as pale as they come, but alas... I have dark hair
but that's the way the cookie crumbles in acting I suppose...

Many of my clients own a good selection of wigs, for just such an occurance.

www.robertkim.com

You don't have much time, but if you could get a copy of Kristen Linklater's "Freeing Shakespeare's Voice", it contains quite a bit of info on pulling "stuff" from Shakespeare's text.

Speaking the text is a majority of the battle. Allowing the sounds to guide you.

The best to you.

There's a wonderful movie called "The Shakespeare Sessions" that if you can ever find it, I strongly suggest it. I have seen it many times, but I don't remember exactly all that the movie said.

Read it, read it, read it. The more you read it the more you will unlock it. Read it outloud. It may be helpful, prior to reading a play, to read the synopsis. The read the play aloud multiple times.
I wouldn't recommend the Linklater book unless you are using the book as part of a class and have a foundation from "Freeing the Natural Voice." Not to get into a Linklater debate but I generally think it's overrated. Read through "Speak the Speech." It's great.

Snuff--I hope you repost this in Working Actor because I think it's a great topic I'd love to blab on and on about!

I'm sure this person's audition has come and gone. But for anyone looking for this kind of help in the future, I have some recommendations.

One of the more unique aspects of auditioning for the Shakespeare stage is that clarity of language is most important. You're more likely to get the job if you handle the verse well and can make 400-year-old language understandable to modern ears.

For one of the best books for actors just beginning their foray into Shakespeare, I highly recommend Clues to Acting Shakespeare by Wesley Van Tassel. It is an excellent resource for both the beginner and intermediate Shakespeare actor. In simple language it explains such important concepts as scansion, antithesis, supporting the ends of lines, and more. It is those techniques and concepts which will help you nail Shakespeare's language.

For more advanced Shakespeare actors I recommend Thinking Shakespeare by Barry Edelstein. No one explains it all quite as clearly as Mr. Edelstein. His book is one of the best to come out on the subject in decades. His work will help bring a new level of clarity and understanding to your Shakespeare acting.

There really are no quick tips or crash courses. Shakespeare is gymnastics for the modern actor. Things such as voice and breathing and supporting and being understood to the back row take on monumental importance in Shakespeare. You're expected to be understood by a modern audience as you talk in iambic pentameter with archaic words while conveying sentences that are sometimes 8 lines long. You're expected to make four centuries old images clear to the audience across entire soliloquies and monologues.

The good news is that if you're a strong modern actor, learning to act Shakespeare will make you even better.

I agree with all that's been said so far...EXCEPT that the characters are all human beings! This is the same as all drama, it's just acting!

So the primary focus should be on the imaginative and emotional work, as in all great acting. If a young actor starts with all this technical stuff Shakespeare probably didnt care too much about in his life, you'll become locked into technical, lifeless line recitation. You'll become an expert robot nerd actor.

The academics go on and on about all the rules. But if your instrument is released and you have a profound imaginative and emotional process, the technical intellectual stuff largely takes care of itself -- that is why Shakespeare is brilliant. He doesn't need too much help from the academics who made all these rules in their academic echo chambers. If a young actor focuses on following rules academics have come up with, the passion and life of these rich characters can be the first to go, guaranteeing failure to tell the story holistically -- passionately and emotionally.

quote:

Originally posted by JBActors:
I agree with all that's been said so far...EXCEPT that the characters are all human beings! This is the same as all drama, it's just acting!

So the primary focus should be on the imaginative and emotional work, as in all great acting. If a young actor starts with all this technical stuff Shakespeare probably didnt care too much about in his life, you'll become locked into technical, lifeless line recitation. You'll become an expert robot nerd actor.

The academics go on and on about all the rules. But if your instrument is released and you have a profound imaginative and emotional process, the technical intellectual stuff largely takes care of itself -- that is why Shakespeare is brilliant. He doesn't need too much help from the academics who made all these rules in their academic echo chambers. If a young actor focuses on following rules academics have come up with, the passion and life of these rich characters can be the first to go, guaranteeing failure to tell the story holistically -- passionately and emotionally.

Wow, I really have to disagree with you there. I am a WORKING Shakespeare actor. I am in rehearsal right now for my 7th professional Shakespeare production in the last two seasons -- too many to count over my lifetime. I have been cast in major roles for my type, such as Sir John Falstaff, the two Dukes in As You Like It, and Camillo in a sold-out run of The Winter's Tale - to great critical acclaim. So I'm not just some schmuck who dropped by a message board. I'm making money at this!

Acting Shakespeare MUST begin with textwork. Shakespeare did not write realism. He wrote poetry. And he wrote it in a world of dialects that we wouldn't understand today using a lot of words that have become obsolete. No amount of "imaginative and emotional work" is going to help you be understood with this 400-year-old poetic language if you do not first have a full grasp of its construction. "Releasing your instrument" and having a "profound imaginative and emotional process" is nothing more than actor masturbation if no one can understand what you're saying.

You, yourself cannot even "tell the story holistically -- passionately and emotionally" if you don't first understand exactly what your character is saying. There is nothing but textwork, and knowing the rules, to help make your character playable and comprehended.

Let's take just one of these rules as an example -- antithesis. Simply put, antithesis is the juxtaposition of opposing ideas or images. Shakespeare abounds in antithesis. "To be or not to be," is as simplistic as it gets, but antithesis in Shakespeare can often be extremely complex using grand images of mythology across entire soliloquies of dialog. If the actor doesn't fully understand the antithesis, the audience won't understand the actor. It's that simple.

I also believe your comment that an actor will become, "expert robot nerd actor," if a "young actor starts with this technical stuff,' is absurd. The rules and the technical stuff are there to do exactly the opposite -- to help the actor understand what he is saying, and communicate it understandably to a modern audience. Understanding scansion, for example, should help to relax technical recitation by helping the actor find speech patterns that he can make his own. Proper ellision helps the actor find a more conversational tone with the iambic pentameter. The rules help the actor understand which words are important to stress so the sense of their speech is not lost.

In short, the rules and mechanics are there to help a student actor find the inner life of their character, and have that character not just heard -- but fully understood and realized all the way to the back row.

Wonderful, JimtheUmp! Thank you for your articulate, relevant response. What a great, respectful discussion about the issues I hope we're about to have.

Other posters can REALLY learn from you about how to have a professional discussion about the Craft. Please pay attention to JimtheUmp, folks! He gets how to be a professional and have passionate, civil discussions about the Craft that don't turn into personal insults or questioning each other's personality or credibility...at least so far...God, I hope I don't have to eat my words (it wouldn't be the first time.) So at this point, thanks Jim. Now I'll address what you wrote...

Jim...first of all, I'm curious. You're a working actor in Phoenix doing Shakespeare? That's neat. I always admire when actors can make a living in non-traditional cities doing professional theater. Tell me more about that -- where you perform, etc. And I'm curious if you would share with us your training background. You sound educated. Have you worked with Cicely Berry or Patsy Rodenburg or David Smuckler or Kristin Linklater or whomever? I'd love to hear if we've had some of the same teachers.

Ok, now. This may surprise you. I'm not sure how carefully you read my first post. I WROTE THAT I AGREED WITH EVERYTHING THAT WAS WRITTEN BEFORE.

quote:

"Releasing your instrument" and having a "profound imaginative and emotional process" is nothing more than actor masturbation if no one can understand what you're saying.

Well of course, Acting 101 from 1945. :-)

I was making my points in addition to what was written. But, I could have been clearer about some things. See Jim, the problem is that the focus is usually TOTALLY on the intellectual part of the work -- among Shakespeare teachers and regular acting teachers. They get so occupied with the stuff you emphasized, that it is to the exclusion of the imaginative and emotional component of acting. So my post was really about balancing that out-of-balance norm that I've noticed is out there.

I work with professional actors in New York all the time who have the very best Shakespeare training and they are locked in their intellects, and/or simply trying to "breath" their way or "release" their way into an ACTUAL, EXPERIENTIAL moment-to-moment NEED to speak the language, and to experientially NEED to "go after" the other characters in pursuit of their "objectives" or "goals" via playing their "actions." They aren't able to truly, ENERGETICALLY, access urgency and deep Archetypal character needs and wants.

Actors must be energy Masters, able to access, create, harness, whatever...altered states-of-being. They must be able to radiate energy and change the molecules in the room, as Chekhov and Glenn Close said (I combined what they said into one thought.).

These actors, and there are lots of them in this category, understand the meaning of the text very deeply -- intellectually. But this isn't enough for many actors, especially young, aspiring ones. They need experiential process and emotional preparation to ACTIVATE the FIRE underneath the intellectual understanding.

(We aren't just computers, we're human animals -- we are irrational, feeling beings motivated by fantasy and desire -- we are trying to act civilized and rational on top of who MOST of us is stored in our ancient unconscious -- a library of millennium (?) of human history, stored in us as Archetypal patterns now. I know that sounded strange, but I think the grammar is correct. I'm not writing for 6th graders today.)

So these actors need to know how to "stir themselves" very deeply to NEED TO SPEAK this heightened, magnificent language. They need to know how to harness massive amounts of Archetypal energy and channel it into HIGHLY SPECIFIC AND WELL ANALYZED STORY-TELLING. Deep emotional experiences and needs to act do not often arise from intellectual understanding -- ALTHOUGH THIS COMPONENT IS SURELY ESSENTIAL. What is needed beyond this and even primary to this is imaginative and emotional tools -- emotional preparations that aren't just cerebral. Physical preparations actors can do, vocal preparations, dream preparations, imagining preparations, sensory preparations. There are 100s of options but they have to taught, developed and learned by aspiring actors.

More than this, actors need to know how to consciously direct their imagination to VERY SPECIFICALLY create the imaginary world that you are ACCESSING or CREATING (depending on your metaphysical belief system). For example, if you are playing Romeo, you have to create the imaginary memories of Romeo -- growing up, the memories and history of the Montagues versus the Capulets -- the historic times, the weather, all the sensory elements, the memory of meeting Juliet, the memories of all the meaningful interactions between them. This is all imaginative work that most actors need to be trained in, beyond simply being told to "use your imagination." Um, to do what specifically?

That's where the imaginative training comes in. If you don't create huge amounts of the fantasy world within which you wish to live, there is nowhere for the "acting" to come from except the intellect. In the case of Romeo, there would no actual, imaginary desire to kill themselves...There's just be cold understanding of the facts...boring acting. And this is often a primary reason so much acting fails for less than elitely trained actors. And all this must be created with the imagination with EXACTING SPECIFICITY. Vague day-dreaming, taught by old-fashioned teachers, doesn't usually cut it.

For some actors, a tiny percentage, a lot of what I'm talking about is automatic. But not for many. And if this stuff isn't automatic it doesn't mean one lacks talent. They just need to learn process options, very specific ones that aren't taught in the "acting classes for the masses" books and schools.

Now to another subject. If an actor is emotionally blocked in certain Archetypal areas, they need more than an intellectual understanding, more than emotional preparation work, and more than processes to create the imaginary world. They need to deal with their emotional blocks -- archetypal blocks.

For example, I've heard of workshops where teachers are now working on accessing the "Archetype" of a character. This is a very old Michael Chekhov influenced approach. And I'm pleased the concept of Archetype Work is spreading like wild-fire all over the place in actor training. However, these teachers are missing something. First, characters are combinations of many Archetypes, not one or two. And Archetypes create the actual, in-the-body NEED to pursue goals and objectives.

But to the main point, if you have an actor who has been taught all their lives never to express anger, let alone the killer impulse, good luck having them succeed at Hamlet -- no matter how much they understand the ideas and world and no matter how much breathing alignment, relaxation work they do! It still won't work. Or imagine an actor who can't access vulnerability, because of their life training, trying to play Hamlet. They may intellectually understand him, but that isn't enough. Deep feelings are one ingredient of great acting, obviously.

So I work with PLENTY of actors, who get work in New York City, who have blocks like this -- in all emotional areas. Unblocking these energies is one of the main focuses of actor training. And the most effective approach for it that I've found in my searches all over the acting training world is modernized Archetype Work. But I'm not going to talk about that, because it's not the point of this thread.

My point is simply that the intellectual understanding IS ABSOLUTELY REQUIRED, YOU ARE RIGHT, but is absolutely NOT SUFFICIENT for success at Shakespeare -- or in any acting for that matter.

Heck, intellectually understanding life doesn't lead to juicy living either, we all know plenty of people like that! I know Nobel Prize winning scientists who can barely look you in the eye when they talk they are so repressed. So deep, intellectual text work is obviously required in the manner you refer to, but definitely not enough.

So again, all the ideas you espouse I agree with...but not necessarily in the order which you proposed. I think the actor training order should be 1) Release work, emotional work, physical and vocal release work, Archetype Work. 2) Imagination Training and Intellectual Training, what you espouse and what I espouse in addition 3) Performance training -- seasoning, the generic ingredients of what makes great acting great, etc. (which I'm not even talking about here).

Don't make the mistake in thinking that what I write in a post is the ONLY thing I think about a subject about acting. My thoughts about acting are highly contextual, based on where an actor is -- in their own training, what medium they are in, what kind of director they are working with, that actor's particular psychology, the way the writer writes, the world of the play, and more and more.

This is all vital because some actors are indeed, maybe you are one of them, ACTIVATED energetically by their intellectual understanding. If that's you, it's great and you are in a minority of human beings, I think. For most human beings, what drives ACTIONS and BEHAVIOR are not rational conclusions about things -- but FANTASIES, HOPES, DREAMS, FEARS, MEMORIES, VALUES ASSOCIATED WITH REWARD AND PUNISHMENT, and more. About 95% of our ACTIONS throughout the day are controlled by our unconscious mind, not our rational mind. So these kinds of things exist in you as Jim the person.

But as Jim playing a character, all these ingredients must be created to achieve Academy award-winning work. As actors get seasoned and experienced, their unconscious creates this stuff more and more automatically. It's part of why Meisner said it takes over 20 years to become an actor. I assume he meant it takes this long for the unconscious to kick in and do most things automatically. Until then, we must consciously invite in the Gods and Goddesses through hard fricking, very specific work. Of course. Are Academy Awards available to just anyone? No, Meryl Streep and Anthony Hopkins have worked their damned a**es off for DECADES to achieve their caliber of work.

So the "rules" and "technical stuff" can liberate some kinds of actors (not many) or repress aspiring actors if LEARNED AT THE WRONG TIME. Usually, if you have an actor who is emotionally, mentally, physically and vocally liberated FIRST, the "rules" and "technical stuff" will go very well when it is approached -- AND THEN BECOMES VITAL TO BE EXPOSED TO.

However, we do have a bit of a disagreement. I do not believe, based on my understanding of history, that Shakespeare took his plays nearly as seriously as modern-day academics. Many of the people who performed his plays were illiterate members of the lower classes. They were having fun. They were not scholars. They were not engaged in deep study of all these rules and technical stuff. Scansion, huuh? Iambic pentameter? Huh? IT WAS JUST THERE. They played with it. Willy wasn't giving lectures about how scholarly his writing was, from anything I've read.

I suspect they were just much less repressed than aspiring actors these days -- and because they read less they listened more. Spoken language and listening may have been more refined because hardly anyone read and we didn't have all these electronic de-humanizing contraptions that distract us from intimacy. There were MANY dialects and MANY ways to perform Shakespeare. The performers were having fun...being crazy...drinking and being merry. It was a flourishing time for freedom and personal expression, perhaps you'd disagree or agree.

And now we have fields of stuffy academics who are "experts" at all the "rules" Shakespearean performers need to learn to do it "correctly?" "Proper ellision?" I admit that made me cringe. I notice many of these academics, I've met them, are totally shut down emotionally. I think that matters -- I think it's no coincidence. I'm an artist, not a robot.

The populist actor in me, the human being who just wants to explore...says, Oh PLEASE! We want the work ON FIRE, we want the work ALIVE, WE WANT PLAY, WE WANT STORY. We want RAW Archetypes being channeled through liberated instruments -- TELLING A HIGHLY SPECIFIC STORY. Do I need all that intellectual stuff to do that? YES, I DO! The deeper I understand the ideas and themes, the deeper the meaning of the energies I call in through my work -- and the more refined by specific story-telling.

That's what I mean by holistic story telling -- a balance of heart and mind -- of spontaneity and impulse -- of conscious and unconscious -- of argument and fantasy -- of civilized versus out of control FIRE! We want MAGIC!

So what do you think...

I typed this very fast, I reserve the right to say I stated something totally unclearly or misleadingly and revise it. These are just my off-the-cuff blogging thoughts, not a scholarly essay.

- Jason Bennett

P.S. - I edited this throughout, probably still will for a bit. But it's done mostly, I think.

quote:

Originally posted by JBActors:
Wonderful, JimtheUmp! Thank you for your articulate, relevant response. What a great, respectful discussion about the issues I hope we're about to have.

Other posters can REALLY learn from you about how to have a professional discussion about the Craft. Please pay attention to JimtheUmp, folks! He gets how to be a professional and have passionate, civil discussions about the Craft that don't turn into personal insults or questioning each other's personality or credibility...at least so far...God, I hope I don't have to eat my words (it wouldn't be the first time.) So at this point, thanks Jim. Now I'll address what you wrote...

I've been on this planet too long to get my panties in a bunch over this stuff.

I think we're both talking about different parts of the same apple.

I do not believe American actors should BEGIN with Shakespeare training. That's like trying to learn to run before you've gotten on your feet. Actors should definitely begin with modern training and all those things that you mentioned. Those things need to be under your belt before learning about the technical aspects of Shakespeare acting. You're absolutely right about that.

quote:

However, we do have a bit of a disagreement. I do not believe, based on my understanding of history, that Shakespeare took his plays nearly as seriously as modern-day academics. Many of the people who performed his plays were illiterate members of the lower classes. They were having fun. They were not scholars. They were not engaged in deep study of all these rules and technical stuff. I suspect they were just mush less repressed than aspiring actors these days. There were MANY dialects and MANY ways to perform Shakespeare. The performers were having fun...being crazy...drinking and being merry. It was a flourishing time for freedom and personal expression, perhaps you'd disagree.

I don't disagree. In fact, I'll go even further to say that some 70% or so of Shakespeare's audience was also illiterate. They didn't understand a lot of what was being said much like our modern audiences today.

When we do workshops for schoolchildren, we have a saying for them to remember -- "Shakespeare was meant to be said, not read." During Elizabethan and Jacobean times, theater-goers went to HEAR a play performed. It was poetry, after all.

I agree that there is far more academic study of Shakespeare's plays today than any Elizabethan actor likely dreamed possible. And I'm not advocating a technical performance of Shakespeare at all. I'm saying Shakespeare is gymnastics for the modern actor. Thoughts are more complex, sentences much longer, and an actor's instrument must be in top shape.

But here's where I'm coming from -- I've seen dozens of talented young modern actors struggling with Shakespeare over the years. My colleagues see hundreds upon hundreds of actors auditioning their classical material in New York City once a year, every year. The most common problem among the vast majority of them -- by far -- is a lack of clarity with the language. They either don't know what they're saying, or they don't know how to be understood with the material.

And the reason is simple -- they don't know the technical basics. They don't understand scansion, antithesis, ellision, caesura, phrasing, supporting line endings, spring-boarding new lines, etc.

In Shakespeare's day, words that are archaic today were understood back then. Unfamiliar sentence structures in modern times were part of everyday language during turn of the 17th Century. Rhetoric was the subject of serious study, and wit was the ancient, "hip."

But Modern English has grown so far from the early version of Shakespeare's time that linguists predict none of Shakepeare's plays will be understood by the masses within the next two centuries. It is archaic, complex, and woefully unfamiliar even today. That's what makes the technical aspects of Shakespeare acting so very important. The idea that those technical aspects are unimportant or secondary is the very reason we see so many actors whose Shakespearean language is unspecific, unclear, and at times incomprehensible.

Thank you for offering such valuable insights to the readers of these boards. I wish there were more informed posters able to discourse for the thousands of readers on these message boards.

I'd still love to hear about your training, etc.

Anyway, so we agree, sounds like about everything in this discussion. Readers can also learn that when the time is taken to clarify thoughts and meanings of words -- in message board discussions especially -- we all learn a lot more. I think this is especially important in issues about actor training, terms are tossed around like you can't believe, turning into discussions about nothing. But I digress.

Yes, I never meant your ideas were "secondary," I meant they should come later in the course of the training. I mean, they can come early, too, as long as all understand that as the psyche/body/voice -- Archetypes -- are liberated in the actor, that's when the work will all come together into an integrated story-telling event. Some teachers don't see the totality of the training, and harp on one approach or area with the effect of truly harming young actors. It can take years to heal the pain and damage caused by that kind of thing. A teacher might harp on the intellectual, or the emotional. It can go both ways. BALANCE!

So, I agree with you about this,

quote:

"My colleagues see hundreds upon hundreds of actors auditioning their classical material in New York City once a year, every year. The most common problem among the vast majority of them -- by far -- is a lack of clarity with the language. They either don't know what they're saying, or they don't know how to be understood with the material.
And the reason is simple -- they don't know the technical basics. They don't understand scansion, antithesis, ellision, caesura, phrasing, supporting line endings, spring-boarding new lines, etc."

But I think you're being too simplistic.

The lack of understanding, or lacking the understanding of the importance of all this, can actually arise from the reverse direction -- psychological repression. I cannot emphasize this enough. We need to really see that it can go both ways.

Psychological/emotional blockage can be so limiting to one's consciousness that they just can't get the deep meaning of the text. Or that they learn all the concepts of looking at the text, as you discuss, but it just doesn't click for them. They learn it and go, "So what? How boring."

So I would bet that some of those young actors you are seeing need to have an experience, in an acting class, of doing exercises that increase their capacity to EXPERIENCE (Viola Spolin believed this was the primary focus of training) -- agony, rage, love, grief, terror, sexuality, the desire to kill or torture someone, magic, spirituality...as real energies...HUGELY...in their bodies, voice and minds. We accomplish with all kinds of exercises that build the endurance to dance with these very real energies. Great actors are always masters of energy manipulation.

Add in the brilliance of Shakespeare's language and you will see sparks fly and they WILL understand the text in the back of the theater. In fact, as you agree, because the language is so inaccessible for modern audiences...it really IS about the ENERGY fires charging the Atmosphere in the live theater (and film), maybe more than ever, yes?

Not that it should be this way. I'd like balance. That gives the actor and audience the very deepest experience. But surely, the energies underneath the words will always be most accessible -- and I'm talking not just about Shakespeare, but about all acting.

So back to the auditions you are seeing. Create the urgency and the need to speak...train the actor to really access these intense energies...and I tell you a lot of the communication DOES happen, even when they do NOT know the technical stuff you focus on. I tell you, I've seen it with my own eyes with actors I've worked with for years. Add in what you are talking about, probably later, but anytime is fine...and then we have the possibility of a Master actor -- like Kevin Kline, who I adore doing Shakespeare.

Thanks for your time on these posts. Sometimes the discourse can get rather depressing.

- Jason

My training came via workshops and classes, eventually leading to a two-year conservatory program at a major regional theater in conjunction with an ivy league university. I was taught -- by working actors as well as exceptional teachers -- a smorgasboard of modern acting techniques both intensive and personalized. Being taught by real, working actors made me a very lucky student. Some of my directors, teachers, and mentors have since gone on to do dozens of major films. I've studied Linklater Voice, Alexander Technique, mask, scene study, etc. You get the picture.

I'll give you a real world example. I've seen actors audition with "All the world's a stage," by Jacques in As You Like It. The reading they give is usually well off the mark.

But if they understood antithesis and looked at the monologue in context, they would realize that Jacques's speech is an opposing thought said in response to Duke Senior. The good Duke calls the world a, "wide and universal theater," and says misfortune is a, "woeful pageant."

Jacques, a malcontent, opposes the grand images of Duke Senior by claiming life is just, "a stage," and not a, "wide and universal theater," at all. He says the people are, "merely players," considered lowly in Shakespeare's day. He ends his cynical speech by saying that all we're working toward is to end up as a baby again with no eyes, no teeth -- and eventually, we just die.

So, right off the bat, I know how much an actor understands about acting Shakespeare just by how he approaches one of the most standard and best-known speeches in the canon. If you don't understand that Jacques's images are in opposition to those of Duke Senior, then you likely do not understand antithesis. And if you don't understand antithesis, then you'll have a major uphill battle in trying to make this 400-year-old language understandable to anyone.

Cool, thanks for sharing about your training. I think it helps readers to see where we're coming from when they know things like that.

Your example is a great one for readers. But to me, your example isn't about Shakespeare as much as it is about understanding antithesis as a concept. It's rather simple script analysis, I'd think.

If you can't see the characters' opposing viewpoints and world-views (in life and in literature), your consciousness is not very developed as a human being. And granted, most aspiring actors have very limited consciousness (because most people do, too).

So this is why my approach to training actors is significantly about increasing consciousness -- about their own psycho-dynamics, about their interpersonal relationships, about the psycho-dynamics of individuals in groups (social psychology), about sociology, about geo-politics between nation-states and on a planetary level...etc.

Because I find that the more conscious the actors, in myriad ways, the more they can easily see these kinds of things in script analysis and press their own experiential buttons.

I rather believe there is hardly any such thing as script analysis "technique" at this point (I'm working on developing it, myself, actually). All that can be taught about script analysis are basic concepts and systems of analyzing psychology. However, the depth of the actor determines the level to which these concepts will facilitate their grappling with the deepest of what humans grapple with -- IF they have developed, and continue to develop, their consciousness as an artist (and therefore, as a person).

So, I approach actor training as a consciousness raising process -- as human beings -- and give that a significant amount of time, prior to dealing with scripts. The results are very, very nice. Because nothing bores me more than watching an unconscious, shallow, repressed person trying to see deeply into what goes on in a script. They can't. Facilitate shifts and advances in their consciousness and you see stunning results.

So back to your point, if an actor can't see the antithesis you refer to, they are on a very low level indeed, not just of learning technical concepts about Shakespeare, but in the Spiral Dynamics of human development (I'm referring to Ken Wilber and Don Beck's work, with that reference).

I've been studying how Spiral Dynamics/Integral Philosophy can translate to a script analysis tool. It's very exciting. I haven't felt this kind of excitement about developing my work with actors for many years, when I discovered and did so much work in Archetypal Psychology (Hal and Sidra Stone, James Hillman, Joseph Campbell).

I wish more people knew how much we can learn about acting by looking to other fields. But hey, I'm an acting teacher, I guess I've appointed myself one of the Chief Obsessor's of such things.

This was a great dialogue. I look forward to a future one. Thanks for this. By the way, I'm well aware I'm not a Shakespeare academic. I have tremendous respect for them, it just doesn't get my fires going like other things do. So I love corresponding with those who obsess about Shakespeare as much as I obsess about acting theory, in general.

- Jason Bennett

quote:

Your example is a great one for readers. But to me, your example isn't about Shakespeare as much as it is about understanding antithesis as a concept. It's rather simple script analysis, I'd think.

Well, in a modern script it would be. But Shakespeare is chock full of antithesis. It's everywhere. That's why it's so important to know. It doesn't just occur between characters, it also occurs constantly during lines within speeches. Sometimes you'll have two different antitheses nested inside one another.

Here's an example of an entire speech based on antithesis. Duke Senior talks about life in exile in the forest of Arden.

"Is not this life more sweet than that of painted pomp?"

There's a line with antithesis -- a sweet life in the forest versus painted pomp.

"Are not these woods more free from peril than the envious court?"

Another one -- it's easy to see the antithesis here.

"Here feel we not the penalty of Adam. The season's difference, as the icy fang and churlish chiding of the winter's wind, which when it bites and blows upon my body, even til I shrink with cold, I smile and say this is no flattery, these are counsellors that feelingly persuade me what I am."

All sorts of antitheses with images going on there. Here versus penalty of Adam. The season's difference versus smile. The bites and blows of the churlish winter's wind versus counsellors. Flattery versus feeling persuasion.

And these antitheses are not neat -- they are nested within one another. By understanding all of the opposing images, and using them as actors -- it makes the language so much clearer to understand.

Thank God for Shakespearean Dramaturgs. I wouldn't leave home without one were I tackling a great role.

I'm one who believes that Dramaturgs and acting teachers should ALWAYS be on staff of professional productions dealing with any kind of meaningful literature.

- Jason