Download or read book Shakespeare and Lecoq written by Ed Woodall and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-05-16 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides actors, directors, teachers and students with a clear, practical guide to applying the work of influential theatre practitioner Jacques Lecoq to the process of rehearsing or workshopping the Shakespeare text. Written by theatre practitioner Ed Woodall, who trained with Lecoq himself, and Shakespeare academic Abigail Rokison-Woodall, this guide begins with warm-ups and ensemble-building, and moves through explorations of the story, the world of the play, the text, character emotion, thought and physicality and staging. Lecoq's method often relies on 'play', and play is often seen as trivial or inconsequential. This book argues that the more playful you are, the more playfully you investigate your speech or scene and the more physically motivated that playfulness is, the more vital and lifelike your acting of Shakespeare will be.
Download or read book Jacques Lecoq and the British Theatre written by Franc Chamberlain and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-07-04 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jacques Lecoq and the British Theatre brings together the first collection of essays in English to focus on Lecoq's school of mime and physical theatre. For four decades, at his school in Paris, Jacques Lecoq trained performers from all over the world and effected a quiet evolution in the theatre. The work of such highly successful Lecoq graduates as Theatre de Complicite (The Winter's Tale with the Royal Shakespeare Company and The Visit, The Street of Crocodiles and The Causcasian Chalk Circle with the Royal National Theatre) has brought Lecoq's work to the attention of mainstream critics and audiences in Britain. Yet Complicte is just the tip of the Iceberg. The contributors to this volume, most of them engaged in applying Lecoq's work, chart some of the diverse ways in which it has had an impact on our conceptions of mime, physical theatre, actor training, devising street theatre and interculturalism. This lively - even provocative - collection of essays focuses academic debate and raises awareness of the impact of Lecoq's work in Britain today.
Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Jacques Lecoq written by Mark Evans and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Companion to Jacques Lecoq presents a thorough overview and analysis of Jacques Lecoq's life, work and philosophy of theatre. Through an exemplary collection of specially commissioned chapters from leading writers, specialists and practitioners, it draws together writings and reflections on his pedagogy, his practice, and his influence on the wider theatrical environment. It is a comprehensive guide to the work and legacy of one of the major figures of Western theatre in the second half of the twentieth century. In a four-part structure over fifty chapters, the book examines: The historical, artistic and social context out of which Lecoq's work and pedagogy arose, and its relation to such figures as Jacques Copeau, Antonin Artaud, Jean-Louis Barrault, and Dario Fo. Core themes of Lecoq's International School of Theatre, such as movement, play, improvisation, masks, language, comedy, and tragedy, investigated by former teachers and graduates of the School. The significance and value of his pedagogical approaches in the context of contemporary theatre practices. The diaspora of performance practice from the School, from the perspective of many of the most prominent artists themselves. This is an important and authoritative guide for anyone interested in Lecoq's work.
Download or read book Moving Body le Corps Poetique written by Jacques Lecoq and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Shakespeare and Language Reason Eloquence and Artifice in the Renaissance written by Jonathan Hope and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2014-09-26 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'This book is nothing short of brilliant. It is bursting with new observations, pithy readings and sensitive analyses. One of Hope's skills is to show us that 'language' is not separable from 'ideas'; both are systems of representation. This is a book about words, conventions, artifice, mythology, innovation, reason, eloquence, silence, control, communication, selfhood, dialect, 'late style' and much, much more. After reading Hope's book you will never read Shakespeare in the same way.' (Professor Laurie Maguire, Magdalen College, Oxford) Our understanding of words, and how they get their meanings, relies on a stable spelling system and dictionary definitions - things which simply did not exist in the Renaissance. At that time, language was speech rather than writing; a word was by definition a collection of sounds not letters - and the consequences of this run deep. They explain our culture's inability to fully appreciate Shakespeare's wordplay and they also account for the rift that opened up between Shakespeare and us as language came to be regarded as essentially 'written'. In Shakespeare and Language, Jonathan Hope considers the ideas about language that separate us from Shakespeare. His comprehensive study explores the visual iconography of language in the Renaissance, the influence of the rhetorical tradition, the extent to which Shakespeare's late style is driven by a desire to increase the subjective content of the text, and contemporary ways of studying his language using computers.
Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Actors Shakespeare written by John Russell Brown and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-05-23 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Companion to Actors’ Shakespeare is a window onto how today’s actors contribute to the continuing life and relevance of Shakespeare’s plays. The process of acting is notoriously hard to document, but this volume reaches behind famous performances to examine the actors’ craft, their development and how they engage with playtexts. Each chapter relies upon privilieged access to its subject to offer an unparalleled insight into contemporary practice. This volume explores the techniques, interpretive approaches and performance styles of the following actors: Simon Russell Beale, Sinead Cusack, Judi Dench, Kate Duchene, Colm Feore, Mariah Gale, John Harrell, Greg Hicks, Rory Kinnear, Kevin Kline, Adrian Lester, Marcelo Magni, Ian McKellen, Patrice Naiambana, Vanessa Redgrave, Piotr Semak, Anthony Sher, Jonathan Slinger, Kate Valk, Harriet Walter This twin volume to The Routledge Companion to Directors’ Shakespeare is an essential work for both actors and students of Shakespeare.
Download or read book Shakespeare and Gesture in Practice written by Darren Tunstall and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-05-19 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When actors perform Shakespeare, what do they do with their bodies? How do they display to the spectator what is hidden in the imagination? This is a history of Shakespearean performance as seen through the actor's body. Tunstall draws upon social, cognitive and moral psychology to reveal how performers from Sarah Siddons to Ian McKellen have used the language of gesture to reflect the minds of their characters and shape the reactions of their audiences. This book is rich in examples, including detailed analysis of recent performances and interviews with key figures from the worlds of both acting and gesture studies. Truly interdisciplinary, this provocative and original contribution will appeal to anyone interested in Shakespeare, theatre history, psychology or body language.
Download or read book Twentieth Century Actor Training written by Alison Hodge and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE SECOND EDITION OF THIS TITLE, ENTITLED ACTOR TRAINING, IS NOW AVAILABLE. Actor training is arguably the central phenomenon of twentieth century theatre making. Here for the first time, the theories, training exercises and productions of fourteen directors are analysed in a single volume, each one written by a leading expert. The practitioners included are: * Stella Adler * Bertolt Brecht * Joseph Chaikin * Jacques Copeau * Joan Littlewood * Vsevelod Meyerhold * Konstantin Stanislavsky * Eugenio Barba * Peter Brook * Michael Chekhov * Jerzy Grotowski * Sanford Meisner * Wlodimierz Staniewski * Lee Strasbourg Each chapter provides a unique account of specific training exercises and an analysis of their relationship to the practitioners theoretical and aesthetic concerns. The collection examines the relationship between actor training and production and considers how directly the actor training relates to performance. With detailed accounts of the principles, exercises and their application to many of the landmark productions of the past hundred years, this book will be invaluable to students, teachers, practitioners, and academics alike.
Download or read book Shakespeare in the Theatre The King s Men written by Lucy Munro and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-04-16 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Created when James I granted royal patronage to the former Chamberlain's Men in 1603, the King's Men were the first playing company to exercise a transformative influence on Shakespeare's plays. Not only did Shakespeare write his plays with them in mind, but they were also the first group to revive his plays, and the first to have them revised, either by Shakespeare himself or by other dramatists after his retirement. Drawing on theatre history, performance studies, cultural history and book history, Shakespeare in the Theatre: The King's Men reappraises the company as theatre artists, analysing in detail the performance practices, cultural contexts and political pressures that helped to shape and reshape Shakespeare's plays between 1603 and 1642. Reconsidering casting and acting styles, staging and playing venues, audience response, influence and popularity, and local, national and international politics, the book presents case-studies of performances of Macbeth, The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, Richard II, Henry VIII, Othello and Pericles alongside a broader reappraisal of the repertory of the company and the place of Shakespeare's plays within it.
Download or read book Boy Actors in Early Modern England written by Harry R. McCarthy and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-09 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This innovative study draws on theatre history and present-day performance to re-appraise the remarkable skills of early modern boy actors.
Download or read book Shakespeare Objects and Phenomenology written by Susan Sachon and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-12-24 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores ways in which Shakespeare’s writing strategies shape our embodied perception of objects – both real and imaginary – in four of his plays. Taking the reader on a series of perceptual journeys, it engages in an exciting dialogue between the disciplines of phenomenology, cognitive studies, historicist research and modern acting techniques, in order to probe our sentient and intuitive responses to Shakespeare’s language. What happens when we encounter objects on page and stage; and how we can imagine that impact in performance? What influences might have shaped the language that created them; and what do they reveal about our response to what we see and hear? By placing objects under the phenomenological lens, and scrutinising them as vital conduits between lived experience and language, this book illuminates Shakespeare’s writing as a rich source for investigation into the way we think, feel and communicate as embodied beings.
Download or read book Theatre of Movement and Gesture written by Jacques Lecoq and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-08-31 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published in France in 1987, this is the book in which Lecoq first set out his philosophy of human movement, and the way it takes expressive form in a wide range of different performance traditions. He traces the history of pantomime, sets out his definition of the components of the art of mime, and discusses the explosion of physical theatre in the second half of the twentieth century. Interviews with major theatre practitioners Ariane Mnouchkine and Jean-Louis Barrault by Jean Perret, together with chapters by Perret on Étienne Decroux and Marcel Marceau, fill out the historical material written by Lecoq, and a final section by Alain Gautré celebrates the many physical theatre practitioners working in the 1980s.
Download or read book Shakespeare Actors and Audiences written by Fiona Banks and published by Arden Shakespeare. This book was released on 2018-11-15 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shakespeare: Actors and Audiences brings together the voices of those who make productions of Shakespeare come to life. It shines a spotlight on the relationship between actors and audiences and explores the interplay that makes each performance unique. We know much about theatre in Shakespeare's time but very little about the audiences who attended his plays. Even today the audience's voice remains largely ignored. This volume places the role of the audience at the centre of how we understand Shakespeare in performance. Part One offers an overview of the best current audience research and provides a critical framework for the interviews and testimony of leading actors, theatre makers and audience members that follow in Part Two, including Juliet Stevenson and Emma Rice. Shakespeare: Actors and Audiences offers a fascinating insight into the world of theatre production and of the relationship between actor and audience that lies at the heart of theatre-making.
Download or read book Imitation and Contamination of the Classics in the Comedies of Ben Jonson written by Tom Harrison and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-10-12 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on the influence of classical authors on Ben Jonson’s dramaturgy, with particular emphasis on the Greek and Roman playwrights and satirists. It illuminates the interdependence of the aspects of Jonson’s creative personality by considering how classical performance elements, including the Aristophanic ‘Great Idea,’ chorus, Terentian/Plautine performative strategies, and ‘performative’ elements from literary satire, manifest themselves in the structuring and staging of his plays. This fascinating exploration contributes to the ‘performative turn’ in early modern studies by reframing Jonson’s classicism as essential to his dramaturgy as well as his erudition. The book is also a case study for how the early modern education system’s emphasis on imitative-contaminative practices prepared its students, many of whom became professional playwrights, for writing for a theatre that had a similar emphasis on recycling and recombining performative tropes and structures.
Download or read book Shakespeare s Body Language written by Miranda Fay Thomas and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-11-14 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do the Capulets bite their thumbs at the Montagues? Why do the Venetians spit upon Shylock's Jewish gaberdine? What is it about Volumnia's act of kneeling that convinces Coriolanus not to assault the city of Rome? Shakespeare's Body Language is a ground-breaking new study of Shakespearean drama, revealing the previously unseen history of social tensions found within the performance of gestures – and how such gestures are used to shame those within the body politic of early modern England. The first full study of shaming gestures in Shakespearean drama, this book establishes how shame is often rooted in the gendered expectations of the Renaissance era. Exploring how the performance of gestures such as figging, the cuckold's horns, and even the in-action of stillness created shaming spectacles on the early modern stage and its wider society, Shakespeare's Body Language argues that gestures are embodied social metaphors which epitomise the personal as political. It reveals the tensions of everyday life as key motivators behind the actions of Shakespeare's characters, and considers how honour and its opposite, shame, are constructed in terms of gender norms. Featuring in-depth analyses of plays across Shakespeare's career, this book explores how the playwright's understanding of shame and humiliation is rooted in performance anxiety and gender politics, explaining how theatrical gestures can create dramatic tension in a way that words alone cannot. It offers both rich insights into the early modern context of Shakespeare's drama and confirms the startling relevance of his work to modern audiences.
Download or read book Lockdown Shakespeare written by Gemma Kate Allred and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-06-16 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection offers the first in-depth analysis and sourcebook for 'Lockdown Shakespeare'. It brings together scholars of stage, screen, early modern and adaptation studies to examine the work that emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic and considers issues of form, liveness, reception, presence and community. Interviews with theatre makers and artists illuminate the challenges and benefits of creating new work online, while educators consider how digital tools have facilitated the teaching of Shakespeare through performance. Together, the chapters in this book offer readers the definitive work on the performance and adaptation of Shakespeare online during the pandemic. From The Show Must Go Online, which presented Shakespeare's First Folio via YouTube, to Creation Theatre and Big Telly's interactive The Tempest and Macbeth, which used Zoom as their stage, the book documents the variety and richness of work that emerged during the pandemic. It reveals how, by taking Shakespeare online in new and innovative ways, the theatre industry sparked the evolution of new forms of performance with their own conventions, aesthetics and notions of liveness. Among the other productions discussed are Arden Theatre Company's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Tender Claws' 'The Under Presents: Tempest', The Shakespeare Ensemble's What You Will, Merced Shakespearefest's Ricardo II, CtrlAltRepeat's Midsummer Night Stream, Sally McLean's Shakespeare Republic: #AllTheWebsAStage (The Lockdown Chronicles) and Justina Taft Mattos's Moore – A Pacific Island Othello.
Download or read book Shakespeare s Theatres and the Effects of Performance written by Farah Karim Cooper and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-01-05 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did Elizabethan and Jacobean acting companies create their visual and aural effects? What materials were available to them and how did they influence staging and writing? What impact did the sensations of theatre have on early modern audiences? How did the construction of the playhouses contribute to technological innovations in the theatre? What effect might these innovations have had on the writing of plays? Shakespeare's Theatres and The Effects of Performance is a landmark collection of essays by leading international scholars addressing these and other questions to create a unique and comprehensive overview of the practicalities and realities of the theatre in the early modern period.
