An Interactive History

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ACTING SHAKESPEARE

• An Interactive History

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HAMLETS ADVICE TO THE PLAYERS Suit the action
to the word, the word to the action this
special observance That you o'erstep notthe
modesty of nature for any thing so overdone
isfrom the purpose of playing, whose end, both
at thefirst and now, was and is, to hold, as
'twere, themirror up to nature to show virtue
her own feature,scorn her own image, and the
very age and body ofthe time his form and
pressure. -
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From the Greeks to the Renaissance
Suspicions about actors...
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The Greeks

• Thespis, first actor
• Was he not ashamed to tell lies before so many
  people?
• --Solon

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The Humours
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Oedipus
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• Quintilian (Rome, 1st C)
• Gestures as an antidote to the humours

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18th - 19th c
Beauty is Truth
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Goethe, Rules for Acting (1824) The GOAL of the
actor is to not only imitate nature but to
portray it ideally (thereby uniting the true and
the beautiful) and to join the beautiful
with the meaningful
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Aaron Hill The Art of Acting1753
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Del Sarte Technique

• Motion Creates Emotion

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JOY

• O wonderful, wonderful, and most
• wonderful wonderful, and yet again
• wonderful, and after that, out of all
• whooping!
•       - As You Like It (Celia at III, ii)

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ANGER

• To hell allegiance, vows to the blackest devil.
• Conscience and grace to the profoundest pit!
• I dare damnation! ..
• Let come what comes, only Ill be revenged
• Most thoroughly for my father!
• Laertes, Hamlet

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???

• To be, or not to be that is the
  questionWhether 'tis nobler in the mind to
  sufferThe slings and arrows of outrageous
  fortune,Or to take arms against a sea of
  troubles,And by opposing end them? To die to
  sleepNo more and by a sleep to say we endThe
  heart-ache and the thousand natural shocksThat
  flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummationDevoutly to
  be wish'd.

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Russian Revolution
Truth is Beauty
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Checkov reading Seagull
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Stanislavski and the Moscow Art Theatre
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METHOD ACTING
American Style
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Strasberg Method
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Rejecting the Method
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Vasily Meyerhold
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Meyerhold Biomechanics
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Viola Spolin

• Theatre Games for the Classroom, Rehearsal, and
  Improvisation