Shakespeare Forever
Curriculum Outline
WEEK ONE - Shakespeare Is A Practice. Discussion: Who is Shakespeare? What did he write? Why study him now? How can we best approach and experience Shakespeare today? Review core concepts to playing Shakespeare and guiding principles of Shakespearean rehearsal, including the question: Why are these people using these words now? In-class reading of sonnets.
WEEK TWO - Words Words Words. Scansion and the architecture of the verse line. The idea of verse as dramatic score. The language of scansion: Feet/Meter/Pentameter/Iambic. Metric stress vs. natural stress. Other features of Shakespeare’s language: Questions/Interjections/Index Words. Introduction to Twelfth Night: History, context, story, characters. In-class reading of Acts 1 & 2 of Twelfth Night.
WEEK THREE - The What Before The How. Paraphrasing: Paraphrase for the who, what and the why of a speech or scene, which leads to the how. Paraphrase the text for the argument, logic, purpose, chains of thought, ideas, images and similes. In-class reading of Acts 3 & 4 of Twelfth Night. Assign scenes from Twelfth Night.
WEEK FOUR - On The Other Hand. Antithesis: How to use antithesis to maximize the drama and avoid overemphasis. Locate and play the opposites critical to making sense of the text. Locate all antithetical words, ideas, phrases and concepts. Begin in-class scansion, analysis and rehearsals of scenes from Twelfth Night.
WEEK FIVE - Advice To The Players. Introduction to Stanislavsky and Sandy Meisner. Introduce concepts of Given Circumstances/Objectives/Actions/Obstacles/Improvisation/Repetition. Collective reading and analysis of Hamlet’s advice to the players. Scene presentations from Twelfth Night.
WEEK SIX - It’s All In The Text. Discussion of Heightened vs Low Language. Additional features of the language as tools for performance: Phrasing with the Verse Line/Partial Verse Lines/Monosyllabic Words/Line Endings/Enjambment/End-Stopped/Caesura/Abutted Consonants/Punctuation. Scene presentations from Twelfth Night.
WEEK SEVEN - If Music Be The Food Of Love. Sound, Rhythm and Tempo in Shakespeare. The rhythmic and sonic notes in Shakespeare’s score are found through: Sentence length, long and short phrases, images, caesurae, word weight, lists, verbs and punctuation. Punctuation exercises in space. NSP - an important rule that can be broken. Billboarding. Scene presentations from Twelfth Night.
WEEK EIGHT - But How Do You Really Feel? Irony, Wit, Humor and Emotion: “You act Chekhov with your heart. You act Shakespeare with your wit.” Analysis of text for when characters say one thing and mean another, exercise wit, and use humor and why. Also: polysyllables, neologisms, latin words and narrative irony. Scene presentations from Twelfth Night.
WEEK NINE - Play On. Behavior, Staging, Scenes and Prose. Shakespeare wrote no stage directions. Most behavior and stage actions are cued by the circumstances and language, and performed at line endings. Features of scenes: Shared Verse Lines/Stichomythia/Tutoyer/Scansion/Height/Antithesis. Features of Prose: Sentences/Parallelism/Three-Part Builds/Numerical Groupings/Summaries/Inventories/Repetition/Punctuation. Final presentations of scenes from Twelfth Night.
WEEK TEN - Shakespeare Is Ours. Excerpts from Peter Brook essay What Is A Shakespeare? Discussion: Who are you as an artist and what do you want to say? How can you use Shakespeare to say it? Simulated table work and rehearsal process of Act 1of As You Like It, with focus on interpretation, form, aesthetics, thematic emphasis and questions of staging facing actors working on Shakespeare today.