We are now in the second week of R&J rehearsals and things are progressing well. After finalizing casting we spent 1 day covering Shakespeare's language and text analysis. The following day we began table work and more text work as each cast member came in with there scripts scanned and analyzed for imagery and meaning. I've got to hand it to those involved because it wasn't until I was in grad school that I really had a handle on understanding Shakespeare and they were able to do it in 24 hours. I would take all the credit but I had some amazing teachers in my adult life that deserve the credit.
Today the cast had fight call and met our fight director. I was very happy to have him on board as he is a certified professional fight director and works exceptionally well with young people and is just an all-around great guy. The kids had a blast and we start to choreograph the fights next week. We begin blocking tomorrow, Friday and finish Monday with scene and fight and scene work the rest of the week. All cast members were told to be off book on Friday and then the real work begins.
A note about teaching Shakespeare...
Something tells me he would find it humorous and somewhat disheartening that his plays are studied more in high school English classes than high school theatre classes. After all he was a playwright who wrote for actors not a writer who wrote to be exalted by English teachers and their students. An actor looks at his plays and sees people who feel the same human emotions as all of mankind while many English teachers treat him like his words are untouchable. With the exception of his sonnets and epic poems...he was a playwright and nothing more. Don't get me wrong here. I have performed 19 of the plays in his cannon and never fail to be humbled when I read his words but it's because he so clearly expresses what we humans feel and does in a way that is not only relevant to our way of thinking but in our way of feeling. Any actor who has studied his work with any proficiency understands that his words are clues to the actor about how to play their part. Meaning, you understand not only what the character says but what the character's intentions are behind the words. It seems that this concept is lost when talking to many students who have been exposed to Shakespeare in English class.
My advice to anyone who teaches Shakespeare is simple. If scanning iambic pentameter, identifying imagery, identifying irregular meter by way of a "pyrrhic", "trochee", or "amphibrach", understanding how punctuation effects rhythm (and yes I'm aware that most of the punctuation was placed there by editors and not by Shakespeare), if you don't know that "troth" rhymes with "both" or that "doth" has the same vowel sound as "does", or the importance of using the "liquid U", the need to use a "pitch bridge" when dealing with parenthetical statements, if you don't know what an "elision" is or why it was used, or how "stichomythia" tells an actor how their character relates to others in the play, please learn what these mean before you attempt to teach his plays. It breaks my heart when young people are taught Shakespeare incorrectly.
More to come...
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
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