Bridging an Essential Gap

I have been incredibly fortunate to work with actors on Shakespeare for more than 30 years,  and whether it be the capacity of a  director,  associate director at a regional theatre,  artistic director or most recently, as head the MFA Acting Program and a Senior Acting Tutor at the Bristol  Old Vic Threatre  School,.    there is a increasingly common expereince  where even  the most giffed actors find they get stalled in advancing thier work on Shakespeare.

This is  most commonly is heard in the comments of early career actors.  They talk about being fustrated by a feeling  that there is a sort of gap that exists between the very solid place the have arrived at through training and early career experiencees and the place where  they want their work to develop to in terms of the performances  that most inspire them  when seeing Shakespeare live in  production.

Many are innately aware they are capable of of tons more than they are managing(and they are right), but don't feel they necessarily  have the required tools to navigate into that new territory.

Rediscovering the Pleasure

Part of this challange is that the world is filled with Shakespeare workshops designed to focus on the foundations and basic tools for tackling Shakespeare, and  cementing the steps necessary to prepare for work in the rehearsal Hall.

At the same time thre are comparitively few workshops designed to  help actors  take the next step beyond that,  and  begin the very  exciting process of integrating all that  foundational knowledge together with their own intelligence,  intuition,  and emotional power as performers.  It is about taking that second step to find  - in the most mature, sophisticated sense -  a graeater ease,  pleasure, and imagination i n the  playing of Shakespeare.