%20copy.png){kind=small}
About the Workshop
.A Message from Geoffrey Brumlik
Bridging an Essential Gap
It has been my great pleasure to work with actors on Shakespeare for more than 30 years, whether it be in 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 Theatre School. Over that time, it has become increasingly clear that playing Shakespeare in the 21st century offers particular challenges where even the most gifted actors find they get stalled in advancing their work.
In particular, there is a common phenomenon in early & mid career professionsals who describe a feeling that there is a tangible gap exists between the place their work on Shakespeare has landed following their training and early-career experiences, and where they want their work to progress to in terms of the performances that most inspire them when seeing Shakespeare onstage.
They are innately aware they are capable of moving past their current level of work (and they are right), but don't have a clear sense how to navigate into that new territory.
Rediscovering the Pleasure
Part of this challenge has to do with an absence of available opportunities.
The world is filled with Shakespeare workshops designed to focus on the foundational tools of tackling Shakespeare and cementing the steps necessary to prepare for work in the rehearsal hall.
At the same time, one finds comparatively few workshops designed to help actors take the next exhilarating steps beyond that, and begin the very exciting process of more fully integrating that foundational knowledge with their own instincts, creative imagination and uniqueness as performers. It is about taking that big second step to find what , in the most mature, sophisticated sense of it, is a greater ease, pleasure, and sense of creative exploration in the playing of Shakespeare.
Engaging in a New Freedom
The Engaging Shakespeare Masterclass has been designed to support actors as they undertake that second, invigorating step forward . It builds on the essential foundations of work on Shakespeare's text (language , pentameter, structure,, etc) but explores those tools as a springboard to discovering the greater freedom, personal connection, and basic humanness possible when playing Shakespeare in the 21st Century.
If you are interested in learning more about the workshop before applying, please feel free to contact us and info@theengagedactor.com.
