Since sending out the flyers, newsletters and emails promoting the new workshop, “Shakespeare’s Archetypes”, I been thinking. This is too important, and too much fun to limit to a two day workshop.  So I have devised a new and cunning plan (to quote Baldrick).

My plan is to call for Expressions of Interest.  Anyone who is interested in doing this workshop is invited to send me their cv and availability.  As soon as there are 6 people ready and willing at the same time, we’ll do it. But be warned, this is not for the faint-hearted. The only way to create theatre that is exciting and dangerous is to take risks. In order to do that, we need a structure we can trust, and that is what this workshop is for.

Archetypes are ways of being human. These exercises allow us to explore the many sides of our own, individual humanity, and how this is expressed physically, vocally by our bodies. Working with cue scripts (individual part scripts with three word cues) is almost on a par with bungee-jumping for sheer terror, but it is also enormously rewarding when you get the hang (oops, no pun intended) of it.

If you can’t wait, though, and you’d like to learn more about these techniques, either to enhance your own performance practice, or to explore new ways to introduce students to Shakespeare, let me know anyway. We’ll work it out.

The images on this page are from the Archetypes Workshop I conducted at Arizona State University, Phoenix, Arizona April 2011.  Participants are Graduate Students (Master of Fine Arts). Notice how their physical presence, the way they use, and exist in their bodies, shifts from image to image.