In-person Specialized Workshops
programme Dates
January 3 to 29, 2023
Arrival: Monday, January 2 Departure: Monday, January 30
Tuition Fees
$4,875 USD
Early payment discount: Pay the full tuition by October 15 and save $600.
The Center for Actor Training typically offers a variety of specialized workshops throughout the year exploring a full range of disciplines including rhetoric, wit, clown, fight, voice, movement, public speaking, and more. Go here for more details on our online programming.
Breath, Swings and the Dance: Movement and Dance for Actors and Dancers
Susan Dibble and Charls Hall will be teaching their individual approaches to movement and dance for actors and dancers. Charls will focus on movement and breath developing from infancy into a full body presence on the stage and the experience of vitality in ‘swings’ to help release and encourage freedom of movement in space. Susan will teach dances inspired by the grace, vitality, passion and precision in Shakespeare’s language. She will lead exercises that wake up the imagination and inspire inventive ideas for creating expressive dances filled with gesture and symbolism.
This course honors the work and continues the legacy of Trish Arnold and John Broome, Shakespeare & Company’s founding movement and dance teachers.
All levels of experience and ability are encouraged to participate.
DATES: March 29 to 30, 2025
SCHEDULE: 10 AM – 4 PM with a break for lunch
LOCATION: Shakespeare & Company campus, Lenox, Mass.
FACULTY: Susan Dibble and Charls Hall
TUITION: $395 (includes on-campus housing Friday and Saturday night); alumni and union discounts are available.
Student tuition: $350
BIPOC artist tuition: $325
Click here to apply.
PLEASE NOTE: For all in-person workshops, all participants and workshop staff are encouraged to have completed a COVID-19 vaccine regimen. For all programs held on the Shakespeare & Company campus in Lenox, Mass., this includes being up to date on the most recent COVID-19 vaccine dose(s) for which one is eligible.
Course Gallery
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You will study...
.01 Linklater Voice
The full progression of Kristin Linklater’s approach to voice training for actors is taught during the four weeks by Designated Linklater voice teachers. In addition to daily classes in Linklater, voice teachers regularly join in text classes and offer specialized classes to help participants integrate the voice work into their scenes.
.02 Movement
The movement progression includes Pure Movement (Swings), Alexander Technique, physical expressivity, and dance. Participants will be guided through exercises to promote awareness of (and release from) habitual body tension, sensitivity to impulse, dynamic physical presence and stamina, delight in moving with passion and precision, and ensemble.
.03 Text Work
Basics introduces the actor to a text approach which demands an open and personal commitment to thought, word, and gesture. Basics evolves into scene work, first through Dropping In (an approach to experiencing the text on a word-by-word basis) and into text analysis and detailed scene work. Classes in Sonnet and Structure of the Verse round out the text progression, allowing actors to merge their personal connection with the form of Shakespeare’s language.
.04 Actor/Audience Relationship
The participant is invited to explore the Elizabethan world of Actor/Audience Relationship—a theatrical reality without a fourth wall, in which the immediate energy of the audience fuels the actor to reveal a deeper level of truth and experience, which in turns enkindles the audience’s ability to receive Shakespeare’s language.
.05 Clown & Stage Fight
The participant is invited to explore the Elizabethan world of Actor/Audience Relationship—a theatrical reality without a fourth wall, in which the immediate energy of the audience fuels the actor to reveal a deeper level of truth and experience, which in turns enkindles the audience’s ability to receive Shakespeare’s language.
Tuition
A limited number of scholarships are available for People of the Global Majority/BIPOC artists from the Dennis Krausnick Fellowship Fund. Contact us for more information.
You will learn:
- A deeper connection of the body and voice when acting on stage
- Confidence to be fully present on stage when speaking Shakespeare's language
- An understanding of the forms and structures that support the actor’s emotional, visceral and cognitive imagination
- The skills necessary to authentically deliver Shakespeare’s language with accuracy, specificity, and clarity of thought
- A renewed trust in yourself as a theatre artist
