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.
Shakespeare's Sonnets: Lightning in a Bottle
John Barton, co-founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), has long been credited with transforming the actor’s approach to speaking Shakespeare’s verse, and he frequently relied on Shakespeare’s Sonnets as a training tool.
Shakespeare’s Sonnets: Lightning in a Bottle will guide participants through an exploration of how the rhythm, rhyme, and wordplay that characterize the sonnet form can push the actor toward greater emotional intensity and intellectual clarity.
Time will be devoted in the first session to researching the historical background of the Elizabethan sonnet and its unique verse structure, and we’ll take time in our two morning sessions to connect or reconnect, with the Linklater Technique of voice training as a means of preparing the voice and body for sonnet work.
The bulk of our class time will be focused on the sonnets. In 14 lines, a Shakespeare sonnet represents a startling number of opportunities to strike a balance between form and content; the form being a carefully adhered to rhyme scheme, the content being the actor’s own sensibility and life experience.
Tina Packer, Shakespeare & Company’s founding artistic director, remembered having to learn and perform sonnets when she became a member of the RSC. She never forgot how the sonnets work served her as an actor, and was sure to make that work part of Shakespeare & Company’s training methodology.
DATES: October 23–25, 2026
SCHEDULE: Friday, 7-9 pm; Saturday, 10 am-9 pm; Sunday, 10 am-6 pm
LOCATION: Shakespeare & Company campus, Lenox, Mass.
FACULTY: Michael Hammond and Rory Hammond
TUITION: $400 USD**
BIPOC ARTIST and STUDENT TUITION: $350
HOUSING: A limited amount of on-campus housing is available for an additional $50/night. First come, first-serve. Housing is private bedroom with shared bathrooms, kitchen, and common areas.
**Alumni (15% off) and union (10% off) and Shakespeare Theatre Association (10% off) discounts available.
Email training@shakespeare.org for details.
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
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
