Playing Shakespeare
An Actor's Guide
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Playing Shakespeare is the premier guide to understanding and appreciating the mastery of the world’s greatest playwright.
Together with Royal Shakespeare Company actors–among them Patrick Stewart, Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Ben Kingsley, and David Suchet–John Barton demonstrates how to adapt Elizabethan theater for the modern stage. The director 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, Barton 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. A practical and essential guide, Playing Shakespeare will stand for years as the authoritative favorite among actors, scholars, teachers, and students.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With the help of Judi Dench, Ben Kingsley, Ian McKellen and other actors, associate director of London's Royal Shakespeare Company John Barton presents Playing Shakespeare: An Actor's Guide. With over 50 of the Bard's plays and numerous U.K. and U.S. theater workshops under his directorial belt, the eminently qualified Barton provides a record of nine Royal Shakespeare Company workshops conducted on television in 1984 with the actors listed above. "Acting is built upon specifics," he writes, and proceeds to give specific advice to modern actors on performing these old but not antiquated texts. This thoughtful guide will be embraced by actors and directors alike. ( Aug. 28)
