Photo Credit: Nic McPhee via cc
When acting Shakespeare it is very likely the language of the piece gets missed from your exploration in favour of character and style. You need to know exactly why each word is there and what you can do with every single moment.
Here is an exercise from the BBC archive which you can play with in rehearsal. This exercise lets you have fun playing the language of your lines.
In this exercise you explore a variety of styles to play the line in – which lets you actually rediscover the lines. The exercise purposely takes you to places you wouldn’t take your actual performance, but by playing the line in some ‘over the top’ ways you are able to really think about the meaning of the language.
Using this method you actually begin to discover every single word and the variety of meanings behind each word. Once you have explored the words you are then able to play with the style of delivery.
It is a terrific exercise for preparing your Shakespeare audition monologue – Shakespeare’s language is so beautiful and full of meaning. Once you think about it from a different place you get out of your own way and might just discover a unique way to deliver a piece which that panel could have already seen 3 or 4 times that day.
Watch the video and try it out for yourself:
To see the original page on the BBC website please click here
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