AYLI Diary: Shakespeare Boot Camp 4

Tonight — last night of boot camp! — we had special guest artist from Mandy Mitchell, a friend of Newnan Theatre Company who has been fortunate enough to train at the Royal Shakespeare Company and in fact played Rosalind while there.

She reiterated all the basics about DOING SHAKESPEARE that we had discussed along the way; it reminded me of having a guest speaker in a class who underlines everything the teacher has been trying to get across. (The only difference was that the cast, unlike my former students, already understood and believed their teacher.)

An aside: I have got to get in the mindset to take photos at these things…

Some of the exercises she introduced us to:

• starting warmups with a chest/heart pat in time with each other, the iambic beat

• reading through a speech or scene as a group…

  • typographic line by line

  • punctuation to punctuation

• physicalization of conversations

  • stepping towards or away from your partner depending on whether you’re gaining the upper hand or losing ground — not as useful in this comedy where it’s just people being witty, but can you imagine Richard III?

  • placing your hand/tapping your partner’s shoulder during your line while maintaining eye contact

• punctuation-to-punctuation reading, going up on tiptoe or hopping at each punctuation mark, and changing direction

We welcomed Chas Nabi to the cast as Silvius. We’re still looking for an Adam and an attendant lord or two.