"Teaching Shakespeare Through Exercises on Acting and on the Basic Emotions"
I wanted students to gain an appreciation of what actors add to a play,
so I taught them some elementary acting exercises and had them put on rough
performances.
Character
We began the semester by exploring how one person is different from
another. I had students write character sketches of people they knew--extend
this to pay special attention to the different ways people talk, noting
their topics, rhythms, quirks, obsessions, directions, and underlying energies.
The exercise led up to these questions:
I then asked each student to focus on one character in the play, and
write out a characterization, quoting significant lines. They were to explore
how this character would act outside the play, then devise other situations
for him. What would her favorite color be? What kind of music would he like?
How would she respond to waiting in line, or to a dull class, or to other
life situations?
Finally, of course, how does the character respond in the play?
Dialogue
I had students transcribe (from an audio tape) an actual, ordinary conversation,
then compare this with a dialogue in a play. Doing this, they were able
to focus on how dramatic dialogue differs from conversation: Dialogue not
only
Leading into the play, I asked students to write a dialogue using characters
and conflicts that anticipated those in the play we were about to read.
Memorizing
I had students memorize a 10-line speech from each play. The first one
was memorized on class time, using the following techniques.
To start with, we all went outside on a large field one sunny day. I stayed
in the middle and assigned students exercises to do while walking. They
walked all over the field and re-converged every few minutes for new instructions.
(The sense of movement, sunshine, spaciousness, and Shakespeare made this
one of my most memorable days of teaching.)
1. Work in pairs. I explained the concept of "supportive audience":
try to provide an atmosphere in which your partner can do his or her best.
This is what an ideal audience does. First exercise: walk up and down slowly
(to begin to get the speech into your body, not just in your head), while
partners read their speeches to each other.
2. Read them again, subvocalizing each phrase (i.e., carefully and fully
enunciate each word, with air, but no sound, not even a whisper). Then repeat,
adding sound.
3. Read again, aloud, to each other. This time, read each unit (phrase,
line, sentence, or other whole) of the speech three times. (By the third
repetition, the student is no longer looking at the book and has begun to
memorize.)
4. Give your book to your partner, who becomes your prompter. Say what you
can remember of the speech. When you forget, say "Line!" in a
tone of voice appropriate to the forgotten word. Partner then prompts.
5. Breathe out a complete, full breath in each line (make your voice very
very breathy).
6. Yawn out the lines, stretching.
7. Relax, slumping into the lines.
8. Give out the lines, as if throwing a ball.
9. Receive the lines as you say them, as if they were entering your body
one by one.
10. Say the lines, making a definite, exaggerated hand-gesture for each
word. (This is especially good.)
11. Say the lines stressing the silences: long pauses.
12. Say them sitting perfectly still.
13. Say them with a body gesture on each word--perhaps a gesture of only
your head or shoulders (if the student is stiff there), or trunk, or whole
body.
14. Deliver your lines back-to-back with your partner, pushing against each
other with each phrase. (I matched students them in size and didn't let
anybody get knocked flat.) This is good for getting the words integrated
into movement. For students of unequal size, I had them arm-wrestle the
lines as they said them.
15. Five-Sensing a passage. Go through the speech five times, stressing
a different sense each time. What does the passage smell like? (Or: what
might the character smell at this point?) What smells do you get from individual
words and sounds? And so on. -- I took them from "weak" to "strong"
senses -- from smell, taste, and touch, to sound and finally sight.
16. Ultimately, the student was asked to prepare an interpretation of the
speech and deliver it. During these presentations, the rest of the class
was placed in position as an audience and instructed in their role (audiences
play roles, too). Each student was asked to come on stage, make eye contact
with the audience, close eyes, breathe twice, experience being there, open
eyes, then deliver the speech. Afterward, each student was coached to receive
the applause, close eyes again, breathe twice, experience being there, and
go off stage without collapsing into silliness or other self-negating responses.
In memorizing and presenting speeches, students got a portion of the text
into their feelings, into their bodies. They experienced it (and themselves)
differently, they had to think about actors and the stage, and they became
closer to others in the class. I made certain that each person's effort
was treated with attention and respect. The elaborate memorization exercises
seemed to help shy students gain the courage to deliver their speeches.
Memorization draws upon one of the most fundamental human faculties--perhaps
the one least exercised in contemporary education. For most of human existence,
people have depended upon memory for the transmission of cultural knowledge.
Who knows what we have lost by turning away from memory to emphasize analysis,
mediated learning, retrieval from reference sources, and computer storage?
The Angry Speech
In my experience, nearly all students emerge from high school with some
anger in them. This could come just from having to sit still so many hours
of so many days and years. It could also come from being constantly told
what to do, being judged, having little to say in their own activities,
and feeling dependent upon the very authority they resent. At any rate,
whenever I have tried to get to deeper emotional levels in a class, one
of the first things I run into is a large reservoir of old, stewing anger
in almost every student.
Actors, as a matter of technique, attempt to utilize any submerged, chronic
emotion they might have by channeling it into a performance (whenever appropriate).
In order to make a deeper connection between the text and the student's
feelings (and in order to find a non-threatening way to encourage greater
emotional awareness), I asked each student to memorize an angry speech from
King Lear. After students had memorized (on their own, this time)
and performed their speeches (I did it, too), we discussed them, and we
discussed anger -- starting with how much trouble almost everyone had expressing
it in the speech. As I read the situation, the exercise did not leave students
feeling anger, but feeling released from anger, exhilerated, energized.
One of the greatest rewards of teaching literature is the privilege of dealing
with profound human emotions in a context that brings them up, renders them
meaningful, and unites us as we share them.
Warmups
I began nearly every class with physical warmups. These consisted of simple
movements and stretches designed to mobilize energy, stretch out stiffness,
and bring students in touch with their own bodies. As part of this, we did
some short meditations, including a basic "centering" exercise.
Centering is essential, because literature and acting can easily sweep you
up into high-level energies that are not your own. You can become a character,
or become wrought up by the experience of acting a part. Centering is a
way of bringing students back into themselves before sending them out of
classroom.
We also used a vocal warmup whenever memorizing or delivering speeches.
This consists of a series of simple vocal and breathing exercises designed
to loosen and expand the voice. I do not teach these as technique. Rather,
such exercises are a way of increasing students' awareness of themselves.
For example, having a student close the eyes, stop up the ears, and deliver
a speech brings the student into closer contact with how the speech feels
from the inside. (Others hear how different it sounds outside.) Good acting,
like good living, is generated from deep within--and is not just the manipulation
of techniques and audiences.
Verbal Collage. For this warmup exercise, students met in groups
of four to six. Each had been asked to bring a list of favorite lines from
the play we were studying. One student was asked to read the first line
on his or her list; the student to the right read his or her first line,
and on around the circle. Then the second line, and on through all the lines.
Then, students were directed to overlap, so the next student must begin
before the first has finished. Then, they were directed to select from their
list at random. Next, while overlapping lines, they were directed to break
the order of the circle, and interject a line any time it seemed right.
In this way, each group re-created a version of the play by combining selected
lines in a spontaneous arrangement, rhythm, and emphasis. We then compared
what the different groups did.
The results were splendid. Each group produced, in its own way, a verbal
collage which expressed a miniature interpretation of the play.
Welfare Christmas. In this warmup, one student was asked to mime
an imaginary object (like a bouncing ball) and pass it around. Each person
took it, transformed it into something different, and passed it on. The
ball became a moth, then a smile, then an umbrella, then something different.
Activities like this are helpful in warming up the imagination, enlivening
the body, and awakening attention. We usually expect students to arrive
at school in a machine, cross an engineered intersection, pass down a hallway
that consists of externalized equations, enter a Euclidian classroom, remove
the headphones connected to the Walkman, turn in their IBM cards, sit in
a quadratic chair, open a book manufactured with computer technology, adjust
the chemical fabrics of their synthetic clothing, peer through the laws
of optics automated into designer frames, and suddenly be able to respond
to Shakespeare. Compared to this jump, space travel seems a trivial journey.
Some transition helps.
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