DRAMA 352 A: Intermediate Acting-Verse

Course Description:

In the ten weeks of this class, we will explore the words and works of William Shakespeare.  We will investigate the Shakespearean canon to more thoroughly ground ourselves in the vast diversity of his characters, plots and language.  We will memorize and speak text from Shakespeare’s sonnets, and
move toward monologues/soliloquies,and finally scene work.

Course Objectives:

• To enlarge our awareness of the enormous demands of Shakespearean text and acting;
• Conversely, to also reduce our intimidation of that text, and to embolden ourselves in our playing of it;
• To specify our relationship to Shakespeare’s words and make specific, theatrical sense of what we read and say;
• To explore Shakespeare's use of rhetoric, and to use our understanding of  it to help us be more persuasive and more clear as speakers in his plays and in our world;
• To hone and sharpen our listening, to the words of Shakespeare’s plays and the words in our own modern lexicon;
• To increase our sense of wonder at what power the right word in the right place has;
• To work on creating a psycho/physical readiness that will enable us to truly enter into the words and selves of Shakespeare;
• To shrug off or break old habits and let the text work on us and through us;
• To fail well and boldly and happily;
• To have moments of freedom and power and ease as we learn to embrace the challenges of this electric playwright and his words;
• To begin to marry our sense of naturalism (as American-trained, contemporary actors) with the demands of highly-structured, heightened text.