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.
Structure of the Verse
In this workshop, Founding Artistic Director Tina Packer will guide participants to a greater understanding of the symbiotic nature of form and content embedded in Shakespeare’s language. Participants will explore how the structure of Shakespeare’s writing deepens its emotional content and how the feeling behind the content guides the structure. Like classical music, structure follows the natural rhythms of the body, and participants will examine how the experience of a dramatic moment lives on both conscious and unconscious levels. This workshop is open to all. Discounts are available for Union and STA members, as well as alumni of the Month-long Intensive or Summer Shakespeare Intensive.
DATES: September 21 to 22, 2024
SCHEDULE: Saturday 10 AM – 4 PM with a break for lunch, Sunday 10 AM – 1 PM
TUITION: $450
LOCATION: Shakespeare & Company campus, Lenox, Mass.
HOUSING: Limited housing is available for an additional fee in single-occupancy rooms in our on-campus dormitory building.
FACULTY: Tina Packer
ADDITIONAL: Participants will be offered tickets to attend a performance of Three Tall Persian Women during the workshop weekend.
PLEASE NOTE: For all in-person workshops, all participants and workshop staff are required 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.
Click here to apply.
Course Gallery
1 / 3
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
