Wherefore:

Shakespeare Workshop: The Story Unfolds – generates from my experience teaching Acting in The Theater Program, of The Conservatory of Theater Arts , at SUNY’s Purchase College. It’s a 4 year program and I teach the 3rd year actors. The 3rd year aims to prepare the students to deal with heightened and complex texts. Shakespeare is the primary canvas.

For me, all the tools the actor has at his/her beck & call are, finally, for one purpose: to tell the story .

Students come to the third year with a developing instrument, newly in touch with itself – emotionally, vocally, and physically. My goal is to bring that instrument further along, so that when confronted with complex or heightened texts, it will remain free, open, fully theirs, and now can allow the story to simply be told, to unfold.

If you understand how language works, it can be a resource and a friend.

I set out to examine how structures – embedded in language – function to tell the story.  The more capacity an actor has to see the structures, the more capacity an actor has to recognize nuance in storytelling and meaning – the better off that actor is. The hope is that, as confidence develops, the actor will no longer feel the need to “work” or “point” text in order “to be clear”, but will instead trust the text to carry that burden, so the actor can go about the business of acting.

Therefore:

This workshop, born from the above model, offers to touch the same themes in a sharply focused four weeks. Shakespeare Works: the Story Unfolds is for actors, who wish to enhance their capacity to employ the tools Shakespeare has given us.