On Playing Shakespeare: Advice and Commentary from Actors and Actresses of the Past (Contributions in Drama and Theatre Studies)

( This compendium opens the stagedoor for those with litt...)

This compendium opens the stagedoor for those with little or no practical experience in acting. For actors and other theatre specialists grappling with the challenges posed by performing or staging the works of the great Bard, here is useful instruction eloquently expressed that will enrich future interpretation and performance. On Playing Shakespeare takes advantage of the long tradition of Shakespearean acting by offering a rich treasury of writings by noted actors who have essayed Shakespearean roles in the past. The perspectives of these thespians offer comprehensive exposure to the challenges of acting in Shakespeare's plays and are emblematic of theatre repertories and popular tastes from the mid-eighteenth century to World War I. Here is Ellen Terry writing on her role as Mamellius in an 1856 production of The Winter's Tale, Edwin Booth on Iago, Fanny Kemble on Lady Macbeth, and dozens of other actors who made lasting theatrical contributions with their interpretations of Shakespeare. These commentaries also bear witness to the actor's eternal struggle to get on the stage, stay on the stage, and perform Shakespearean roles to varied audiences in sometimes less-than-ideal conditions. The heart of the book, and its climax, deals with matters of interpretation, with actors' differing reactions to the same role placed side-by-side for purposes of clear contrast. The work includes photographs of John Barrymore, Sarah Bernhardt, Edwin Booth, and others in roles they discuss in the book. The volume proceeds in sequence from the sort of background and training necessary to approach Shakespeare with assurance through the performance itself and its aftermath. The first section of advice and commentary deals with Preliminaries, such as training, body and movement, voice and diction, ease and concentration, and more. This chapter includes four actors on Beginning in Shakespeare. In Getting the Part, which includes casting, Clara Morris writes on a young actress as Juliet. Writings on reading the play, memorizing, observation, research, and gesture are included in the section on Working the Part. Interpreting, rehearsing, and performing the part each receive separate sections. In Clusters of Commentary, the book's longest section, various actors comment on performing specific roles, such as eight actors on Hamlet, three actresses on Portia, and more. On Playing Shakespeare speaks to actors and directors who face the contemporary challenges of playing Shakespeare and to Shakespeareans and scholars with more general interests in the history, technique, and tradition of Shakespearean acting. A must for graduate and undergraduate courses in acting Shakespeare; courses in the history of acting; and graduate courses in nineteenth-century British and American theatre history.

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Garrick Claims the Stage: Acting as Social Emblem in Eighteenth-Century England (Contributions in Drama and Theatre Studies) by Leigh A. Woods (1984-06-19)

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Public Selves and Political Stages (Routledge Harwood Contemporary Theatre Studies)

(The interaction of the arts in public discourse features ...)

The interaction of the arts in public discourse features in all the interviews in the book, and they provide practicable models to theatre workers interested in applying their art toward a notion of the common good, and to those in political life interested in enlisting the theatre's close collaboration in the challenge of governing. Through the models of experience they advance, the interviewees emerge as independent and creative practitioners of feminism, both inside and outside the theatre. Public Selves, Political Stages consists of 19 interviews with Icelandic women in theatre, politics, or both. In Iceland, there is a greater overlapping between politics and the arts than is typical of larger nations, giving theatre considerable prominence, while lending political life much of the immediacy of the theatre, even in the age of video.

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Garrick Claims the Stage: Acting as Social Emblem in Eighteenth-Century England (Contributions in Drama and Theatre Studies)

(Whenever an actor is adopted by a culture, that actor can...)

Whenever an actor is adopted by a culture, that actor can fairly be said to represent certain composite features of the audience which applauds his efforts on the stage. In the remarkable degree that David Garrick was adopted by the mid-eighteenth-century English theater audience, the resonance between his acting and that which his society found provocative must have been unusual in both its richness and its intensity. This study will attempt to describe the sympathy which existed between Garrick and his public, and it will seek the consistencies between his public functions as an actor - documented and validated as they were by his contemporaries - and his private experience. A great and popular actor such as Garrick functions to unify and embody his culture in ways that to some extent transcend the ordinary divisions enforced by social class or by narrow professional interest. Indeed, the definition of any actor's popularity lies precisely in an ability to appeal to people of all kinds, and at all times. This study generalizes a good deal about tendencies and beliefs which seem to have figured prominently in eighteenth-century English life, but it is the public and consensual nature of Garrick's role in the life of his times that prompts such generalizing. His career presents a model for exploring tensions and contradictions central to his age, and the last chapter, in particular, investigates the sense in which the man was himself both a composite and a walking paradox.

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