Learn To Act Shakespeare With Judi Dench, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen

Playing Shakespeare | The Royal Shakespeare Company founder John Barton holds a master class

If you want to bone up on your Shakespeare for 2010, there’s some excellent resources out there.

First up is Playing Shakespeare. Legendary John Barton founder holds a master class with members of The Royal Shakespeare Company including: JUDI DENCH, IAN MCKELLEN, PATRICK STEWART, BEN KINGSLEY, and DAVID SUCHET

In a series of nine intensive acting workshops, shows how he makes classic plays accessible to modern audiences without compromising the text’s integrity. Company members, in discussions and demonstrations, reveal how the actor can search Shakespeare’s verse for hidden clues to a characters’ motivations and how they balance intellect and passion to make theatre’s most famous soliloquies seem fresh — here’s a clip from one of the workshops:

At the heart of the RSC’s approach is the Rhythm of Shakespeare’s language, i.e., it’s the rhythm that encodes how the character feels about what they’re talking about, about how they feel about what they want and what’s happening to them.

A highly useful adjunct to Playing Shakespeare is Patsy Rodenburg’s Speaking Shakespeare:

To understand any play text fully you have to speak it.

To release its full power you have to commit through the body, breath and word.

You have to trust the words and know what those words mean.

To access the power of a play you have to know how it’s constructed.

You can’t act Shakespeare until you can speak him. (Speaking Shakespeare, Introduction).

Finally, for Shakespeare monologue work, an excellent resource is Silverbush & Plotkin’s Speak The Speech, Shakespeare Monologues Illuminated.