American Shakespeare Center 2

It has been an amazing first week in Staunton!!!!! We have been so busy working on Othello everyday. This week has been focused on getting through the play and understanding Shakespeare rhetoric and how they influence the characters and the meaning of the play. I talked a bit about the process in the earlier post I made but now that we have finished up the first part of table work I would love to talk about it a little bit more. 

Shakespeare's rhetoric is so important to performing the play to its absolute potential, the American Shakespeare Center is a strong supporters of not imposing our own ideas on the play. Shakespeare used the words he did for a reason and we as actors, directors, and designers should not discount those words to create our own understanding of what we think is the "right" way to do Shakespeare. Shakespeare is well known in the theatre and literary worlds as being a wordsmith for a reason because the way he uses language is genius. Yes there are certain aspects of Shakespeare's work that does not fit or go together at points but we're all human. It's amazing to watch the director and the actors work because they have an exercise in which they paraphrase Shakespeare's words in order to get the nuance of exactly what he means. As a group they delve into exactly what he was trying to say about a person depending on the way he stated something or the word he used. There are many different interpretations of Shakespeare's work but this rhetorical analysis is what makes ASC so impressive because they know what they are saying, and they know how to emphasize and make their motives clear. 

I had some interesting theatre-going experiences this week as well. On Thursday night I celebrated the fourth of july by going to see a play at ASC called Return of the Forbidden Planet. If you haven't seen it yet I totally suggest you do. It is based on The Tempest but references every well -known Shakespeare play in a wonderful and genius way. Oh, did I mention it's also a rock musical??? And yes it is set in outer space, and yes there are great songs in it. If you've never seen it or read it you should there are many many great surprises that make the whole experience so much fun!!! 

Another play I went to see at ASC was Romeo and Juliet.  Romeo and Juliet was one of the best versions I have ever seen of the show it told the story beautifully. It didn't focus on condemning the youthfulness, nor did it condemn the adults. It showed how tragic society and hatred is. It was also funny. Romeo and Juliet is really funny play up until the last hour. There are so many productions that have missed the humor because a lot of people don't see that there can be humor in a tragedy but that is what makes the tragedy in Romeo and Juliet so jarring. These were two young teenagers who were laughing and having fun but it gets taken away so quickly. It was a beautifully done story and an impressive cast of actors. 

So that was my week, as you can see I've been really busy with my work and seeing shows, but it's the greatest work I could ever be doing. I love it here!! I've even started talking to some people about grad school that they went to trying to find one that might be right for me for acting. I can't wait to see where the next five weeks goes. This next week we will be working with the show and playing with it a little, I'm also planning on going to see the Shakespeare camps productions tomorrow as well as All's Well That End's Well sometime in the next couple weeks. It is pretty amazing here and I love this company. 

- Lauren Dentler