Download or read book Great Shakespeare Actors written by Stanley Wells and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Great Shakespeare Actors written by Stanley Wells and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2015-04-24 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Playing Shakespeare written by John Barton and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2010-11-10 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Secrets of Acting Shakespeare written by Patrick Tucker and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Best Actors in the World written by David Grote and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2002-07-30 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shakespeare knew actors because he was one. The first book-length study of its kind, this volume investigates Shakespeare as a member of his acting company, dating and casting all the plays they presented from 1594 to 1614, and exploring the effects of actors on his writing. Much has been written about Shakespeare and a great deal is known about the Elizabethan theater. Yet little has been done to examine Shakespeare in relation to his acting company. This book casts light on Shakespeare's life in drama and the creation and staging of his plays. More precisely than any other work, it establishes the dates for his company's productions, exploring the varied and profound influences actors had on the works of Renaissance dramatists, and giving us a unique look at the man who knew his actors best of all. As a member of the newly organized Chamberlain's Men, a company that rose to fame in the London theater, Shakespeare experienced the numerous crises, both personal and political, that nearly destroyed the company at the construction of the Globe. Grote describes the company's reorganization as the King's Men, which led to the writing of Shakespeare's great tragedies, as well as the trials of the plague years, Shakespeare's retirement from the stage, the development of writers to replace him, and the burning of the Globe.
Download or read book Shakespeare in Sable written by Errol Hill and published by Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press. This book was released on 1984 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Book of Will written by Lauren Gunderson and published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.. This book was released on 2018-06-18 with total page 95 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Mastering Shakespeare written by Scott Kaiser and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-01-12 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book I Will be Cleopatra written by Zoe Caldwell and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2002-11 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I Will Be Cleopatra represents the literary culmination of a legendary theatrical career and a fascinating life."--Jacket.
Download or read book John Barrymore Shakespearean Actor written by Michael A. Morrison and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing the Victorian and Edwardian antecedents of Shakespearean performance, this 1997 book situates Barrymore's distinctive contribution in light of past and ensuing tradition.
Download or read book Shakespeare on Stage written by Julian Curry and published by Nick Hern Books. This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book As You Like it written by William Shakespeare and published by . This book was released on 1810 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Shakespeare s Advice to the Players written by Sir Peter Hall and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-06-18 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The best-selling guide to acting Shakespeare in a new smaller and lighter handbook size. Shakespeare tells the actor when to go fast and when to go slow; when to pause, when to come in on cue and when to accent a word. His text is full of such clues. He tells the actor when but never tells him why or how. That is up to the actor. Much like bringing a musical score to life, Peter Hall guides us to 'speak the speech'. An essential text for classical training at drama school and an invaluable reference book for actors and directors working on Shakespeare productions. Peter Hall makes watching or reading Shakespeare a richer experience, for audiences as well as actors.
Download or read book Ira s Shakespeare Dream written by Glenda Armand and published by Lee & Low Books. This book was released on 2024-04-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The inspiring biography of Ira Aldridge, a Black actor who overcame racism to become one of the greatest Shakespearean actors of the nineteenth century.
Download or read book A Midsummer Night s Dream written by F. Murray Abraham and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 89 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, F. Murray Abraham provides a joyful commentary on playing the character of Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream, his favorite role in his forty-year career in the theater. Writing with both insight and passion, Abraham not only shares his own experiences in playing Bottom in different productions-most notably and most fondly at Joseph Papp's Public Theater in New York City in 1987-but also analyzes the play's characters and breaks down its language to assist the reader in understanding the richness of the humor and the sheer inventiveness of the plot.
Download or read book An Actor s Guide to Performing Shakespeare written by Madd Harold and published by Lone Eagle Publishing Company, LLC. This book was released on 2002 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Madd Harold strips Shakespeare of his mystique and gives the professional actor, drama student, and theatre director access to unambiguous and easy-to-master techniques used by great actors throughout the ages.
Download or read book Laurence Olivier and Richard Burton written by Charles River Editors and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-03-25 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes the actors' quotes about their lives and careers *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading Of all the great actors of the 20th century, none personifies acting royalty more than Laurence Olivier, and some of this is simply due to the fact that he was actually knighted in 1947, along with a lengthy list of other honors that include being named a life peer in 1970 and admission to the Order of Merit in 1984. To speak of The Right Honourable Lord Laurence Olivier is not a figure of speech but rather a fact. Of course, in addition to the literal sense of the term, there is undeniably a manner in which Laurence Olivier qualifies as acting royalty, as it is not for nothing that Spencer Tracy once referred to Olivier as "the greatest actor in the English-speaking world" (Bacall). It is also important to note that Tracy refers to Olivier not as a film or theater actor specifically, because much of Olivier's lofty standing derives from his ability to successfully navigate different mediums like stage, film, and television. The breadth of mediums in which he worked, the various roles he inhabited within them (actor, producer, director), and the formidable time span of his career lend Olivier's career a scope of perhaps unmatched magnitude. Indeed, Laurence Olivier worked for so long and was so successful that few actors receive the level of visibility that he still enjoys, even more than two decades after his death. While his theatrical performances exist only as memories, his cinematic adaptations of several of Shakespeare's most famous plays remain the most canonical even to this day. Hamlet, for example, has been produced for the screen by several famous directors, but his version, released in 1948, is the most well-known and best-received. It is through his films that viewers also gain a full appreciation of his creative style, as Olivier assumed full authorial control (from actor to director to producer) over many of his films, particularly the Shakespearean ones. In this sense, it is appropriate to claim that Laurence Olivier was not only a storied actor but also an artist who worked best when enjoying full authority over his productions. In the 1960s, the most popular actor in the world was Richard Burton, a hard-drinking Welshman who was nevertheless so professional that he was one of the preeminent stage performers of his day. In fact, he performed Shakespeare so magnificently that he was compared to British legend Laurence Olivier, and that success ultimately led to a film career that earned him 7 Academy Award nominations, as well as BAFTA and Golden Globe awards for Best Actor. Given his accomplishments on the stage and in Hollywood, Burton became one of the world's most recognizable leading men, so it seemed fitting that he engaged in one of Hollywood's most legendary romances with Elizabeth Taylor while on the set of Cleopatra, one of the era's most notorious movies. In fact, his tumultuous relationship with Taylor, which included two marriages, dominated tabloids and remains the one thing most people associate with Burton today, despite the rest of his accomplishments. Burton's high-profile marriage to Taylor helped bring attention, but it also led to more self-destructive behavior, and in a sense it represented the peak of Burton's career. Over the last decade of his life, Burton began appearing in mediocre films, and due to his declining health and constant drunkenness, his performances were mediocre as well, often involving incoherent slurring. The fast life ultimately caught up with him in 1984, when a cerebral hemorrhage killed him at the age of 58. Fittingly, it was the same cause of death that befell his alcoholic father in 1957, just as Burton was at the precipice of Hollywood stardom.
