Earlier this week Christine Schmidle, graduate of the MBC MLitt/MFA program and director of Session 2's A Midsummer Night's Dream, led a workshop of the ideas and techniques of Michael Chekov. His views on acting include the idea that feelings cannot be commanded, but qualities can. Although it may not be possible to make yourself feel tender, you can behave in a manner indicating tenderness, and you will, therefore, appear tender. First handing out selections from “On the Technique of Acting,” Christine had the campers study the descriptions of different terms and techniques -- such as Focal point, Radiating and Receiving, Improvisation, Entirety, Form, Psychological Gesture, Characterization, and Imagination -- and then explain these terms to the group. These exercises are like lightbulbs. You don’t need them all, but they’re there for you to use to illuminate your acting.
The campers then put these ideas into action as Christine had them do an improvisation exercise where they were exploring an imagined atmosphere. What if all around you instead of air was Jello? “Try moving in it. Does it get in your mouth? Do you like that? Now you are in the atmosphere of fire.” Followed by water, mud, happiness, stone, tension, awe and clouds. It was fascinating to see which atmospheres resembled each other, and how each affected the way the campers moved in their space.
Next was a more elaborate imagination exercise in which Christine led them all through a complicated sequence of locations and attributes, including the beach, the woods, and climbing Mt. Olympus, then becoming a fairy or a classical deity or a soldier all in turn. The campers put themselves into the world Christine described with incredible specificity which was a delight to watch. They fell to the ground when they lost their fairy wings, shivered and laughed with delight when they had run right up to the shoreline and had the waves of the sea crash around their feet, and sat in perfect stillness as Diana or Jupiter, contemplating their own imagined immortality.
By this time everyone was ready for a break, but you know you’re at Shakespeare camp when at a break in the workshop everyone begins working on their lines.
After the break, they started applying these techniques to the characters they play in the productions for this camp, considering questions like: How does your character move her hands? Which leg would he move first? Haircolor? Earrings? Maybe just one? The camper imagined all the particulars of their characters, then stepped into them, and began walking and talking in that persona. For a final exercise, the campers each took about ten lines of the text they are working on in their plays and put concrete actions to motion of the speech. Maybe your character cradles his first line and punches the second. Drawing in a character with the third line? It was two and a quarter hours constructive work, while it all came across with the discovery and delight of playing pretend like a four year old.
On Tuesday, Dr. Mary Hill Cole, a professor at Mary Baldwin College, gave a lecture on the stories of history and what we store in our memories. Beginning with some questions for the campers she circled around what we know or remember about the history of the last 100 years. Next she let us extrapolate what we imagine Shakespeare and Marlowe might have known about the last 100 years in the history of England and its connections with the rest of Europe. Who are the big names? What are the big events?
The rest of the lecture went through some of the events and persons most important in the history of England and the world from 1484 (100 years before the birth of Shakespeare and Marlowe) till well into their lifetimes. We talked about the Wars of the Roses, what was at stake, and how that affected the kings who followed. We talked about Henry VIII, his wives, and their fates. How did Elizabeth became queen, and who was in the way of her coming to the throne? What was the importance of the shift from Catholicism to the Protestant Church of England, and how were the regular English citizens affected by it? We talked about the Spanish Armada, and the Gunpowder Plot, as well as the various plans and purposes of her time as queen. We also talked a bit about James I, and how the country was different under his rule. Dr. Cole ended her lecture by answering any questions from the group. Who was the "dark lady" of the sonnets? Was Marlowe gay? What about Shakespeare writing sonnets to a man; do we know who this man was? Inquiring minds want to know.
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