Product Overview
Shakespeare: Helping an Actor Prepare
by Mary Braaten
This is a method to help actors prepare Shakespeare. Edith Skinner taught Shakespeare text analysis to the acting students in the Drama Department at Carnegie Mellon University. This book was written in order to pass on her method of teaching Shakespeare for actors.
It teaches how to prepare an actors worksheet of Shakespeares monologs and sonnets. You will learn how to do a text analysis: of the sentences, phrases and meter, of adjustments to maintain meter, and of poetic devices such as sounds, figurative and rhetorical language.
It describes how to work with long and complex sentences. You will organize, subordinate and build information using the pitch range of your speaking voice, inflection, phrases and pauses, and stress.
It has monologs and dialogs from Shakespeare to illustrate variations in meter, variations in lines, lines that are meant to include business, and shared and overlapping lines. Each section includes examples from Shakespeare for practicing the techniques that are introduced.
There is a brief discussion of Shakespeares punctuation and editorial practices.
About the Author:
Mary Braaten received her M.F.A. in Drama from Carnegie Mellon University and has taught in the professional acting training programs at Carnegie Mellon University, North Carolina School of the Arts, Boston University, and as a tenured professor in the Theatre Department at San Francisco State University.
(2016, Plastic Coil, 114 pages)
