This module involves an intensive study of one Shakespeare text. Students on the module will take a series of practical performance workshops, combined with academic lecture-seminar sessions, culminating in work towards an assessed performance of a short scene from the Shakespeare play studied.
The practical workshops focus on an actor's approach to performing Shakespeare, and will include rehearsal exercises, approaches to verse-speaking, breath and movement when working on a classical text, approaches to adaptation, characterization, handling imagery, and conveying meaning in performance.
Lecture-seminars will offer a thorough grounding in the historical and theoretical contexts of the play, as well as its contemporary resonances and performance histories, and will involve close textual analysis as well as discussing different productions of the plays both on film and in the theatre. Different directorial approaches will be compared and analysed.