Exploring Shakespeare 2: An Actor's Perspective

Skills addressed:
- Shakespeare text analysis
- Identifying objective and obstacle in scenes and monologues
- Naming and playing tactics
- Breaking scenes into beats
- Physical and vocal characterization
- Mining the text for given circumstances and then using the imagination to fill in the gaps
- Speaking text from memory
- Listening and responding to scene partners
- Giving and receiving constructive feedback

I am a classical actor and teaching artist who has performed in about two thirds of Shakespeare's canon. I have taught Shakespeare to high school and middle school students for the past 20 years in many different settings, from single-day workshops to two-week camps to semester-long classes. I have been a teaching artist in theatres around the US, including the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington DC, Imagination Stage in Maryland, and others. I was adjunct faculty for two years at Seattle Pacific University, where I directed the University Players, a touring troupe that wrote two scripts per year and toured them to high schools, churches, and community spaces throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Degrees earned: 
BA, Theatre and English, Seattle Pacific University
MFA, Classical Acting, The Shakespeare Theatre Company/George Washington University

Learners will need to spend time outside of class learning their lines so they will be ready to make progress in class with their scene partners. 

2 hours per week in class, and an estimated 1 - 2 hours per week outside of class.

Since we will be working from plays the learners have already studied, they should already have access to the texts of the plays. After they have chosen their scenes and monologues, they will need to print them out so they can make notes on them.