Theatre Arts 236

ACTING SHAKESPEARE

Professor Mazer

Fall 2017

519 Annenberg Center, 3-2659; cmazer@english.upenn.edu

Office Hours: by appointment

I. Language, objectives, action: Sonnets; Chorus and scenes from Romeo and Juliet.

John Barton, Playing Shakespeare (links to Youtube clips on Canvas).

II. Shakespeare’s Stage and Stagecraft: Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar..

Essays and chapters by Alan C. Dessen:

“Linking Analogue” (from Elizabethan Drama and the Viewer’s Eye); “Elizabethan Darkness and Modern Lighting,” and “Theatrical Metaphor: Seeing and Not-Seeing” (from Elizabethan Stage Conventions and Modern Interpreters); “Much virtue in As,” “The Vocabulary of ‘Place,’” and “‘Romeo opens the tomb’” (from Recovering Shakespeare’s Theatrical Vocabulary). (Canvas)

III. Text and Performance.

Examples from Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet.

IV. Playing the Scene/Building a Play: Julius Caesar.

V. The Director: Conceiving a Production:

Julius Caesar.

Requirements/Grading:

There will be two take-home assignments, at dates to be announced, and a final term paper/project on Julius Caesar. ATTENDANCE IS REQUIRED AT ALL CLASSES, as is scene-work as assigned. ABSENCE FROM ANY CLASS AT WHICH YOU ARE SCHEDULED TO PRESENT A SCENE, ESPECIALLY IF IT IS WITH A PARTNER WILL AUTOMATICALLY BE REFLECTED IN YOUR GRADE. You are responsible for scheduling your own rehearsal time for assignments that require it. Lateness to class impedes our collective work, and is a discourtesy to your fellow students, and will be reflected in your grade.

Required Theatregoing:

All’s Well that Ends Well, Theatre Arts Program, Bruce Montgomery Theatre, Annenberg Center, November 8-11. Other potential theatregoing: TBA.

Potential film viewings: HD screenings of Titus Andronicus (RSC Theatre), Sept.10 and 14, Bryn Mawr Film Institute; Macbeth (Stratford, Ontario), BMFI, Oct 8 and 12;The Taming of the Shrew (Stratford, Ontario), BMFI, Nov. 5, 9.

Books: find your own modern SINGLE-VOLUME editions of the sonnets and Julius Caesar.

All other readings are available for download on Canvas. An electronic version of this syllabus is at http://www.english.upenn.edu/~cmazer/236f17.htm. The listserv for this course is THAR236-401-17C@lists.upenn.edu.