Playing Shakespeare
Call Number: Upper Floor PR3091 .B37 2001
Together with Royal Shakespeare Company actors (including Patrick Stewart, Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Ben Kingsley, and David Suchet), director John Barton demonstrates how to adapt Elizabethan theater for the modern stage. He begins by explicating Shakespeare's verse and prose, speeches and soliloquies, and naturalistic and heightened language to discover the essence of his characters. In the second section, the director and the actors explore nuance in Shakespearean theater, from evoking irony and ambiguity and striking the delicate balance of passion and profound intellectual thought, to finding new approaches to playing Shakespeare's most controversial creation: Shylock, from The Merchant of Venice.