Shakespeare Live! OSP's acclaimed actor residency program, provides schools with one, two, three or a team of four OSP actors specially trained for classroom work. The actors spend quality time with the students helping to pry the Bard's remarkable characters off the printed page and put them where they belong—on their feet. Through participatory exercises, students are actively involved in recreating scenes from a play by Shakespeare and examining the play from a theatrical point of view. Together, actors and students improvise situations, explore language and movement, analyze character relationships from an actor's perspective, block the scenes as a director would, paraphrase the language and then perform the scenes as written.
Through this exploration, students are introduced to Shakespeare and his world in a fun, understandable way. The fundamental lesson is always clear: that William Shakespeare used the building blocks of the stage with architectural brilliance and wrote about real people, grappling with real life problems.
What a Residency might include: Most residencies are centered around a specific play, often Romeo & Juliet, Julius Caesar or Macbeth. We begin as we would in the theatre, with a simplified audition process and a first reading of the script to understand the action. This is followed by blocking rehearsals to learn how the words may be illuminated by movement and business and how the remainder of the class may be involved as crowds, servants or passersby helping to set the tone and mood of the scene. It is often valuable at this point to work with improvisation to make the situation of the scene more relevant to the experience of the students. We often incorporate a stage combat workshop into the classes to make the fight scenes more real for the students. The residency may or may not culminate in any type of performance, depending on the goal of the teacher. Other elements of theatre including history, commedia, swords, masks and costumes may be introduced to illustrate a convention of the stage.
Workshops will be tailored to the age and experience level of the group. Master classes in acting, directing, stage movement, stage combat, improvisation and vocal technique are available. Have you considered a workshop for your teachers? Let us design a residency to suit your needs!
For more information or to schedule a tour, residency, workshop or any combination of activities, please contact:
Sue Ellen Reiman, Managing Director
Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park
PO Box 1437
Oklahoma City, OK 73101-1437
(405) 235-3700
E-mail:
Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park is on the residency roster of the Oklahoma Arts Council.
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