Virginia Commission for the Arts

American Shakespeare Center

American Shakespeare Center | Playing in Shakespeare's Staging Conditions

Educational Background/Training

Aubrey Whitlock

Aubrey Whitlock is the Director of Education Programs at ASC. She holds an MA in Teaching from Chapman University, and both an MLitt and MFA in Shakespeare & Performance from Mary Baldwin University. She is a former classroom teacher, podcaster, and professional theatre practitioner.

Lia Wallace

Lia Wallace is the Education Programs Manager at the ASC. She earned her BA in Shakespeare and Education from NYU Gallatin, and both an MLitt and MFA in Shakespeare & Performance from Mary Baldwin University. She has been teaching Shakespeare’s text and technology since 2012, and oversees a range of educational programming for all ages.

About the Artist/Ensemble

The American Shakespeare Center illuminates the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, classic and new, refreshing the individual, fostering civil discourse, and creating community in the Blackfriars Playhouse and beyond.

ASC Education is the Center for Shakespeare in Performance Studies. We believe that by teaching students and teachers the tools our actors use (and that Shakespeare’s actors used) to find opportunities for character choice in the texts of early modern drama, we empower them to take ownership of their engagement with the text, each other, and their world. The tools that ASC can offer to teachers and students and those which we emphasize in all of our programming, are:

  • Discovering multiple interpretations of the text through an interactive and rigorous exploration of 
    • meter 
    • rhetoric
    • embedded stage directions
    • moments of audience contact
  • Playing in an Elizabethan space
    • identifying entrances, exits, and placement based on the theaters Shakespeare wrote for
    • creating dynamic stage pictures as an ensemble, accounting for the quirks of a thrust configuration and universal lighting
  • Identifying historical context and influences in the plays
    • making the obscure clear for readers and actors
    • interrogating that context through a multiplicity of modern critical lenses to enrich understanding of the play and the world at large

Educational Program Description

ASC CORE CURRICULUM OF WORKSHOPS
A series of 60-90 min. encounters with Shakespeare that can be taken either together or individually and customized to any relevant Shakespeare or contemporary performance text. 

CURATE YOUR OWN “SHXCADEMY” by booking 2 or more workshops and other activities for the same visit! Inquire at booking about combinations that will suit your learning goals.

PROLOGUE

  • Shakespeare’s Staging Conditions*
    Step into Shakespeare’s world and explore how the staging conditions he wrote for reveal insights about the plays and playing. An introductory mash-up covering the fundamentals of several Text, Actor, and Staging workshops from our Core Curriculum. 

THE CORE CURRICULUM

TEXT

  • Editing Shakespeare
    Follow the journey of Shakespeare’s foul papers to discover the “infinite variety” of performance and storytelling choices available to you.
  • Verse
    Mine the texts we have for clues about choices available for the actor alert to the patterns (and subverted patterns) of Shakespeare’s most common poetic meter: iambic pentameter.
  • Rhetoric
    Crack the code of Shakespeare’s wordplay by breaking down figures of speech and illuminating them as clues for character, staging, and communication.
  • Stage Directions
    Let the text direct by excavating the embedded directions for the stage out of Shakespeare’s dialogue on the page.

ACTOR

  • Cue Scripts
    Explore the essential information and playing prompts offered by the “cutting edge” technology of early modern script distribution.
  • Character Play
    Build your performance toolkit and “get into character” by making vocal and physical choices about Shakespeare’s text
  • Doubling
    Learn about ASC’s long-standing practice of doubling actors (based on Shakespeare’s likely practice of the same) and then put it into practice yourself by creating multiple characters within one of Shakespeare’s plays.
  • Clowns
    Use your physical and vocal vocabulary to awaken the unique sensibility of the Clown. Every moment is an opportunity to clown around in this lively and joyful workshop.

STAGING

  • Audience
    Learn how to collaborate with the ever-present scene partner, the audience, in this innovative and electrifying workshop.
  • Special Effects
    Stage Shakespeare’s soundscapes or gore using a few tricks and the theater of the imagination.
  • Directing
    Communicate like a director, applying your knowledge of text, acting, and staging to a scene in collaboration with actors.

Fees

Workshop costs: $25/person per hour

Minimum cost: $250 (10 students)

Audiences

  • Elementary Students
  • Secondary (Middle/High School) Students
  • College/University Students
  • Adults
Categories:
Skip to content