A Good Day...

Two weeks ago, I was in a panic. We were finishing up the Ancient Greeks in Styles of Acting and moving ever closer to the dreaded "Shakespeare." Shakespeare is one of those guys that you either love teaching... or you hate. Okay, that's not true. You either love teaching him, you hate teaching him, or you're scared of teaching him. Me? Up until about a week ago, firmly in the third camp.

Now don't get me wrong. I've studied Shakespeare in school. I've acted in a few Shakespearean plays. But the idea of being responsible for teaching other people to act Shakespeare seemed daunting. I mean, how do I balance the beauty and hugeness of the language with the intimacy and honesty that we expect out of our actors?

A few nights ago, I realized that the deadline was looming and it was not going to get any easier. So... having no idea where to start, I opened up all of my books on Styles and then turned to my handy "Speaking Shakespeare" by Patsy Rodenburg. And as I read, I began to think, "Hey I know this... and this... and this!" And suddenly this mammoth that is Shakespeare didn't seem so hard.

Start with what you know... it seems so simple but as a teacher I am always having to remind myself of that. Sometimes I get so consumed with the sheer amount of information that is out there (that I don't know) that I forget... I do know a fair amount about this stuff.

So today, I taught my first lesson on Shakespeare. We didn't get out of chairs. We just looked at text. We examined what the words mean and what they conjure up for us actors. We looked at how they sound and how they appear on the page and what that means for us as actors. We looked at iambic pentameter, not as something that limits us or should scare us, but as something that points us towards better understanding of the text. And, get this, it was fun. I left them hanging, swearing to them that the best was yet to come (because it is!)... and I think a few of them might even be looking forward to coming to class on Tuesday. All in all, I'd say that's a good day.