Shakespeare And The Actor

Author : Meredith Anne Skura
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 348 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 1993
Category : Drama
ISBN : 0226761800

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Shakespeare the Actor and the Purposes of Playing by Meredith Anne Skura Pdf

For the Renaissance, all the world may have been a stage and all its people players, but Shakespeare was also an actor on the literal stage. Meredith Anne Skura asks what it meant to be an actor in Shakespeare's England and shows why a knowledge of actual theatrical practices is essential for understanding both Shakespeare's plays and the theatricality of everyday life in early modern England. Despite the obvious differences between our theater and Shakespeare's, sixteenth-century testimony suggests that the experience of acting has not changed much over the centuries. Beginning with a psychoanalytically informed account of acting today, Skura shows how this intense and ambivalent experience appears not only in literal references to acting in Shakespearean drama but also in recurring narrative concerns, details of language, and dramatic strategies used to engage the audience. Looking at the plays in the context of both public and private worlds outside the theater, Skura rereads the canon to identify new configurations in the plays and new ways of understanding theatrical self-consciousness in Renaissance England. Rich in theatrical, psychoanalytic, biographical, and historical insight, this book will be invaluable to students of Shakespeare and instructive to all readers interested in the dynamics of performance.

Author : Stanley Wells
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 323 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2015
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9780198703297

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Great Shakespeare Actors by Stanley Wells Pdf

Great Shakespeare Actors offers a series of essays on great Shakespeare actors from his time to ours, starting by asking whether Shakespeare himself was the first--the answer is No--and continuing with essays on the men and women who have given great stage performances in his plays from Elizabethan times to our own. They include both English and American performers such as David Garrick, Sarah Siddons, Charlotte Cushman, Ira Aldridge, Edwin Booth, Henry Irving, Ellen Terry, Edith Evans, Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Peggy Ashcroft, Janet Suzman, Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, and Kenneth Branagh. Individual chapters tell the story of their subjects' careers, but together these overlapping tales combine to offer a succinct, actor-centred history of Shakespearian theatrical performance. Stanley Wells examines what it takes to be a great Shakespeare actor and then offers a concise sketch of each actor's career in Shakespeare, an assessment of their specific talents and claims to greatness, and an account, drawing on contemporary reviews, biographies, anecdotes, and, for some of the more recent actors, the author's personal memories of their most notable performances in Shakespeare roles.

Author : John Barton
Publisher : Anchor
Page : 286 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2010-11-10
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780307773913

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Playing Shakespeare by John Barton Pdf

Playing Shakespeare is the premier guide to understanding and appreciating the mastery of the world’s greatest playwright. Together with Royal Shakespeare Company actors–among them Patrick Stewart, Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Ben Kingsley, and David Suchet–John Barton demonstrates how to adapt Elizabethan theater for the modern stage. The director begins by explicating Shakespeare’s verse and prose, speeches and soliloquies, and naturalistic and heightened language to discover the essence of his characters. In the second section, Barton and the actors explore nuance in Shakespearean theater, from evoking irony and ambiguity and striking the delicate balance of passion and profound intellectual thought, to finding new approaches to playing Shakespeare’s most controversial creation, Shylock, from The Merchant of Venice. A practical and essential guide, Playing Shakespeare will stand for years as the authoritative favorite among actors, scholars, teachers, and students.

Author : Adrian Brine,Michael York
Publisher : Smith & Kraus
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : Acting
ISBN : 1575250594

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A Shakespearean Actor Prepares by Adrian Brine,Michael York Pdf

Explains how to prepare to act in one of Shakespeare's play through an investigation of the language used by the playwright and a true interpretation of his meaning.

Author : Patrick Tucker
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 2013-11-05
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781135862336

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Secrets of Acting Shakespeare by Patrick Tucker Pdf

Secrets of Acting Shakespeare isn't a book that gently instructs. It's a passionate, yes-you-can designed to prove that anybody can act Shakespeare. By explaining how Elizabethan actors had only their own lines and not entire playscripts, Patrick Tucker shows how much these plays work by ear. Secrets of Acting Shakespeare is a book for actors trained and amateur, as well as for anyone curious about how the Elizabethan theater worked.

Author : Scott Kaiser
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 429 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2012-01-12
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781581159608

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Mastering Shakespeare by Scott Kaiser Pdf

Who says only the British can act Shakespeare? In this unique guide, a veteran acting coach shatters that myth with a boldly American approach to the Bard. Written in the form of a play, this volume's "characters" include a master teacher and 16 students grappling with the challenges of acting Shakespeare. Using actual speeches from 32 of Shakespeare's plays, each of the book's six "scenes" offer proven solutions to such acting problems as delivering spoken subtext, using physical actions to orchestrate a speech, creating images within a speech, dividing a speech into measures, and much more.

Author : Lauren Gunderson
Publisher : Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
Page : 95 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2018-06-18
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9780822237723

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The Book of Will by Lauren Gunderson Pdf

Without William Shakespeare, we wouldn’t have literary masterpieces like Romeo and Juliet. But without Henry Condell and John Heminges, we would have lost half of Shakespeare’s plays forever! After the death of their friend and mentor, the two actors are determined to compile the First Folio and preserve the words that shaped their lives. They’ll just have to borrow, beg, and band together to get it done. Amidst the noise and color of Elizabethan London, THE BOOK OF WILL finds an unforgettable true story of love, loss, and laughter, and sheds new light on a man you may think you know.

Author : Lois Potter
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2022
Category : Acting
ISBN : 0192693417

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Shakespeare and the Actor by Lois Potter Pdf

What is a 'Shakespearean actor'? Does the term still have any meaning? Drawing on the biographical and autobiographical accounts of actors and directors, as well as on interviews with actors from a wide range of backgrounds, Shakespeare and the Actor looks at these questions in a variety of contexts, historical and contemporary. A survey of the training of the classical actor, with its increasing vocal and physical demands, considers how it, like the subsequent career path, is affected by class and gender. There is discussion of the uneasy balance of power between actors and directors, rehearsal practice, the difficulties faced by women as performers and directors, and attempts at undirected productions. Other chapters consider the roles that actors do and don't want to play, and why, their relation to the Shakespeare text and editorial practice, the complex relationship between actor and audience, and the popularity of anecdotes about things that go wrong. Throughout, examples are taken, as far as possible, from the author's own long experience of theatregoing. A final chapter looks at new trends in the theatre that have been accelerated by the long period of closure during the pandemic, particularly attempts at greater inclusivity in both actors and audiences. It concludes that the main reason Shakespeare is performed is that actors want to play the roles he wrote.

Author : Arthur Colby Sprague
Publisher : Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press
Page : 508 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 1944
Category : Electronic
ISBN : UCAL:B4386515

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Shakespeare and the Actors by Arthur Colby Sprague Pdf

Author : Martin Buzacott
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 188 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 2013-10-31
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781136120688

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The Death of the Actor by Martin Buzacott Pdf

In The Death of the Actor Martin Buzacott launches an all-out attack on contemporary theatrical practice and performance theory which identifies the actor, rather than the director, as the key creative force in the performance of Shakespeare. Because actors are absent from the site of Shakespearean meaning, he argues, the illusion of their centrality is sustained only by a rhetoric of heroism, violence and imperialism.

Author : Errol Hill
Publisher : Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press
Page : 326 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 1984
Category : Actors, Black
ISBN : UOM:39076000892641

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Shakespeare in Sable by Errol Hill Pdf

Author : Julian Curry
Publisher : Nick Hern Books
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Drama
ISBN : 1848420773

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Shakespeare on Stage by Julian Curry Pdf

Thirteen leading actors take us behind the scenes, each recreating in detail a memorable performance in one of Shakespeare's major roles. * Brian Cox on Titus Andronicus in Deborah Warner's visceral RSC production * Judi Dench on being directed by Franco Zeffirelli as a twenty-three-year-old Juliet * Ralph Fiennes on Shakespeare's least sympathetic hero Coriolanus * Rebecca Hall on Rosalind in As You Like It, directed by her father, Sir Peter * Derek Jacobi on his hilariously poker-backed Malvolio for Michael Grandage * Jude Law on his Hamlet, a palpable hit in the West End and on Broadway * Adrian Lester on a modern-dress Henry V at the National, during the invasion of Iraq * Ian McKellen on his Macbeth, opposite Judi Dench in Trevor Nunn's RSC production * Helen Mirren on a role she was born for, and has played three times: Cleopatra * Tim Pigott-Smith on Leontes in Peter Hall's Restoration Winter's Tale at the National * Kevin Spacey on his high-tech, modern-dress Richard II * Patrick Stewart on Prospero in Rupert Goold's arctic Tempest for the RSC * Penelope Wilton on Isabella in Jonathan Miller's 'chamber' Measure for Measure The actors discuss their characters, working through the play scene by scene, with refreshing candour and in forensic detail. The result is a masterclass on playing each role, invaluable for other actors and directors, as well as students of Shakespeare - and fascinating for audiences of the plays. Together, the interviews give one of the most comprehensive pictures yet of these characters in performance, and of the choices that these great actors have made in bringing them thrillingly to life. 'These passages of times remembered contribute vividly to the sense of a teemingly creative period when Shakespeare seemed to have been rediscovered.' Trevor Nunn, from his Foreword

Author : Robert Cohen
Publisher : Smith & Kraus
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2005
Category : Drama
ISBN : UCSC:32106018558954

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Acting in Shakespeare by Robert Cohen Pdf

Acting in Shakespeare helps actors at all levels develop the skills they need to perform in Shakespeare plays. Lessons proceed in carefully graduated stps from simple, single lines to short speeches to more difficult, sophisticated scenes. A wealth of historical information and insightful descriptions of Shakespearean times and players bring Shakespeare's work within the actor's reach.

Author : John Payne Collier
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 360 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 1846
Category : Actors
ISBN : STANFORD:36105010707946

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Memoirs of the Principal Actors in the Plays of Shakespeare by John Payne Collier Pdf

Author : John H. Astington
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2010-09-30
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9781139788519

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Actors and Acting in Shakespeare's Time by John H. Astington Pdf

John Astington brings the acting style of the Shakespearean period to life, describing and analysing the art of the player in the English professional theatre between Richard Tarlton and Thomas Betterton. The book pays close attention to the cultural context of stage playing, the critical language used about it, and the kinds of training and professional practice employed in the theatre at various times over the course of roughly one hundred years - 1558–1660. Perfect for courses, this survey takes into account recent discoveries about actors and their social networks, about apprenticeship and company affiliations, and about playing outside the major centre of theatre, London. Astington considers the educational tradition of playing, in schools, universities, legal inns, and choral communities, in comparison to the work of the professional players. A comprehensive biographical dictionary of all major professional players of the Shakespearean period is included as a handy reference guide.