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Acting With Shakespeare: The Comedies PDF

164 Pages·2000·14.035 MB·English
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n LIBRARY OSTON PUBLIC D Square Cople', THE APPLAUSE ACTING SERIES ACTING WITH SHAKESPEARE: Three Comedies Suzman Janet Other Titles From The Applause Acting Series: THE ACTOR AND THE TEXT Cicely Berry TWO SHAKESCENES: SHAKESPEARE FOR John Russell Brown SHAKESPEARE’S PLAYS IN PERFORMANCE John Russell Brown ACTING IN FILM & (book videocassette) Michael Caine A PERFORMER PREPARES David Craig ON SINGING ONSTAGE David Craig THE END OF ACTING: A RADICAL VIEW Richard Hornby DIRECTING THE ACTION Charles Marowitz RECYCLING SHAKESPEARE Charles Alarowitz MICHAEL CHEKHOV: ON THEATRE AND THE ART OF ACTING (audiotapes) STANISLAVSKI REVEALED Sonia Moore THE MONOLOGUE WORKSHOP Jack Poggi THE CRAFTSMEN OF DIONYSUS Jerome Rockwood SPEAK WITH DISTINCTION Edith Skinner ONE ON ONE: THE BEST MONOLOGUES FOR THE NINETIES Jack Temchin (ed.) CREATING A CHARACTER Aloni Yakim VOICES OF COLOR Woodie King, Jr. (ed.) THE ACTOR’S EYE: SEEING AND BEING SEEN David Downs THE APPLAUSE ACTING SERIES General Editor: Maria Aitken A CTING WITH SHAKESPEARE: Three Comedies Suzman Janet APPLAUSE t? t? NEW YORK LONDON • An Applause Original ACTING WITH SHAKESPEARE: THREE COMEDIES By Janet Suzman © Copyright 1996 by Applause Theatre Book Publishers All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publishers, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data Suzman, Janet. Acting with Shakespeare the comedies / byJanet Suzman, : cm. p. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 1-55783-215-3 1. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616—Dramatic production. 2. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616—Comedies. 3. Comedy. 4. Acting. I. Title. PR3091.S89 1996 822.3’3-dc20 95-34944 CIP British Library Catalog in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is avaible from the British Library Applause Books A&C Black 2 1 1 West 7 1St Street 35 Bedford Row New York, NY 10023 London WC1R4JH Phone (212) 496-7511 Phone 0171-242 0946 Fax: (212) 721-2856 Fax 0171-831 8478 A&C Distributed in the U.K. by Black Printed in Canada FOREWORD Having been asked to write a book which was in its origi- nal form a television master-class, several problems instantly sprang to mind. The to-and-fro of repartee and off-the-cuff remarks would obviously not transpose to the page with much felicity; neither would the interplay between the actors, myself interposing, be much good. But actors are indispensable to acting exercises, and I certainly did not want them to be sacri- ficed for the sake of clouds of theory. It was, after all, their per- formances which provoked a closer examination of the prob- lems that evolved, and which in turn encouraged the audience to make enquiries. So you will find, in this book, that these actors’ names crop up every now and then as the chief partic- ipants in this workshop. There were six people who kindly elected to be the guinea pigs: Ewen Cummins, Emma Cunningham, Simon Heale, Anne-Marie Marriot, Veronica Roberts, and Andrew Weale. My thanks to them, and to my publisher who was endless- my ly forbearing about colloquialisms, and equally under- my standing about attempts at describing the heat of the moment. Goode Gordon by Photo ‘a The Comedy o/£n*or.r Janet Suzman as Luciana and Diana Rigg as Adriana (Stratford, 1963) This is the exact opposite of what a book on acting should be, if indeed there should ever be such a thing. I suspect there should not. Just for starters, acting means getting up off your behind and breathing life into the printed page. This book does just the reverse. Plucked out of the air, ripped from the mouths of gallant actors, squeezed back through the hoary old channels of analysis, and slapped back down onto a page, the words now lie gasping at the loss of their new-found freedom. I have, therefore, to disabuse you. Although the genesis of this book lies in a so-called master class, acting is not, in fact, master class-able. Music You need yourself and you need an instrument. is. The instrument you play your means of communication; is it serves as both your shield and your conduit. After a punishing training period lasting years and years and never quite fin- ished, you are either able, technically speaking, to play the piece, or you are not. Whether you can then muster a magis- terial interpretation is a matter of balancing the composer’s intentions with your particular genius. You can learn by pre- 2 Acting With Shakespeare cept. Interpretation is a matter for negotiation and may be demonstrated to you without hurting your feelings too much, because your ego is marginally less at stake than your options. Acting, however, like pain, is more a matter of opinion. You are your own instrument. There are really no technical absolutes for you to conquer. You require a text and yourself, When but a self bared of defenses. your acting is being dissect- ed the criticism can appear to be aimed at you personally, when, in fact, it is directed at your interpretation. It is all too easy to lose sight of that distinction when your self-confidence wavers. No wonder, then, that the actor’s ego can be a fragile thing, seeing itself as a mere matter for dispassionate discussion. Still, when all’s said and done, it is your choice to put yourself on the line by being an actor, so you have no one but yourself to answer to for such unwelcome incursions into your privacy. At worst, then, the process can be hurtful; at best, it can be pure joy, because that very personality of yours is illuminating a fictional one and making it sing. Music is not fictional; — abstract, yes, but not fictional it does not require an imagina- tive construct. Opera singers have the uplifting support of the music. Actors have only silence; no protection there. Acting reaches into the inaccessible recesses of human behaviour, and requires you, while keeping your sanity, to be as mad as a hatter. There is no “open sesame” for these recess- es; there are no special exercises analogous to playing scales; there are merely ways to approach it, aspects to be conscious of, techniques to absorb. The development of that awareness can take years of training, years of practise, but let’s face it, the bottom line is that neither music nor acting can be taught unless you have an ear for it.

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