Theatre Arts/English 236
ACTING
SHAKESPEARE
Professor Mazer
Spring 2007
519 Annenberg Center, 3-2659; cmazer@english.upenn.edu
Office Hours:
Tuesdays and Thursdays:
Noon-1:30; and by appointment
e-mail:
cmazer@english.upenn.edu
I.
Language, objectives, action:
Sonnets; Chorus and scenes from Romeo
and Juliet.
John
Barton, Playing Shakespeare (DVD, on
reserve in Rosengarten), Cicely Berry, The
Actor and the Text, (chapters TBA).
II.
Shakespeare’s Stage and Stagecraft:
Romeo and Juliet and All’s Well That Ends Well.
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,” and “The Vocabulary of ‘Place,’”
(from Recovering Shakespeare’s Theatrical
Vocabulary). (bulkpack)
III. Text
and Performance.
Examples from Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet.
IV.
Playing the Scene/Building a Play:
All’s Well That Ends Well.
V.
Speaking the Verse, Creating the Character.
Richard
Paul Knowles, “Shakespeare, Voice, and Ideology: Interrogating the Natural Voice”; Sarah
Werner, “Performing Shakespeare: Voice Training and the Feminist Actor,” with
responses from Cicely Berry, Patsy Rodenburg, and Kristin Linklater, and follow
up response from Sarah Werner (bulkpack)
VII. The Director:
Conceiving a Production:
All’s Well That Ends Well, Twelfth
Night, The Taming of the Shrew.
Requirements/Grading:
There will be TWO take-home assignments, at
dates to be announced, and A FINAL TERM PAPER/PROJECT on Twelfth Night. 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.
Theatre Productions to be seen (dates and group rates
to be arranged):
People’s
Light & Theatre Company, Twelfth
Night: February 28-April 7
Lantern
Theatre Company, The Taming of the Shrew: March 30- April 29
(Other
productions and/or videos TBA)
Books to
be purchased,
Pennsylvania Book Center (34th and Sansom Sts.):
Cicely Berry, The Actor and The Text, Applause.
William Shakespeare, The Sonnets, Pelican Shakespeare.
William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well, Pelican
Shakespeare.
Bulk-Pack
to be purchased,
Campus Copy Center (3907 Walnut Street):
An electronic version of this syllabus
(http://www.english.upenn.edu/cmazer/236sp07.html). Make a bookmark for this site on your web
browser. The listserv for this course is
THAR236-401-07A@lists.upenn.edu. You
have been subscribed automatically. If
you do not seem to be on it, or if you drop the course and wish to be
unsubscribed, please send a note to cmazer@english.