A Demonstration of Teaching and Learning Skills

Chapter 11

Session One

Coach:As usual, with Shakespeare, there's too much material, but we'll get through a lot of it. Part 1 of this book, Clues to Acting Shakespeare, is our guide. Each of the skills we want to work on is discussed here. We can try to stick to the order in which the skills are presented, but that's not always possible. For example, one of you may have a line in your monologue that can't be resolved without jumping ahead to a new skill. So when that happens, we'll jump ahead. But we'll still revisit that skill when we arrive at that section of the book. Learning to speak Shakespeare's language is very much like baseball. It's about fundamentals, and the more times you scoop up the grounder or swing the bat, the better you become. So you can't visit any of these skills to often.

Alex: What if we don't like baseball? (General Laughter.) But I get your point.

Coach: And there's a second point we can also tie to baseball. You don't try to turn a double play until you can scoop up the grounder. So there is a kind of progression to learning these skills.

Alex: Do you need to follow it?

Coach: You could jump ahead to the last of the basic skills outlined in part one, which is imagery, but you'll be a great deal better at imagery if you can first dig out the antithesis, and you'll be a great deal better at finding antithesis if you can first phrase a line, and so on. If you turn to page 12, you'll find a list of the basic skills we're going to work on. In our sessions togerher, we'll work on each of the skills. Then you apply that skill to your monologue. Each of you needs a monologue-twelve to twenty lines-something you like. Planning ahead, select something you can use as an audition piece for the next few years. You'll be spending many hours with this monologue, so you might as well get double mileage out of it.

Kristin: Can the women do men's monologues?

Coach: Sure, but it may not serve you as well for the double use-now, and later as an audition piece. But you can surely select one. So here's the path. We learn skills one by one, then each time you perform your monologue, you add a new skill. The other actors listen and everyone takes notes. We listen only for skills we've learned to date. For example, after we've learned scansion and end-of-line supports-the first two skills-you'll read your monologue and we'll listen for your ise of those two skills. We'll point out where you missed using them and trust that next time you do the monologue, those spots will be fixed. Your first assignment is to select a monologue and a sonnet. you won't perform the sonnet but you will perform the monologue, with all the skills applied. After we've applied all of the skills to the monologue, I'll invite some people in to hear your work. With you sonnet, apply the skills as we go along and write out the analysis, then hand it in at the end of the workshop. This will allow me to review an example of your written analyses. At our next session we'll hear everyones choices and determine whether these are good monologues to work on. For example, if the monologue uses both verse and prose, you're better of finding something else. All of the skill we'll be learning apply to verse, but only some apply to prose. Also, be certain your monologue has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Later, if you use it for an audition piece, you'll want that structure. Once the monologue has been approved and we've completed any cuts of additions to the monologue, type it up-double- of triple-space-and bring a copy for each member of the workshop. The triple-spacing is to give you room to write down the analysis of each word, phrase, and line. You'll need that space.

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