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Lehrende/r: Michael A.C. Claridge
Veranstaltungsart:
Seminar
Anzeige im Stundenplan:
05.874.313
Semesterwochenstunden:
2
Unterrichtssprache:
Englisch
Min. | Max. Teilnehmerzahl:
- | 30
Anmeldegruppe: ELC 313
Prioritätsschema: Senatsrichtlinie
Zulassung gemäß Richtlinie über den Zugang zu teilnahmebeschränkten Lehrveranstaltungen vom 07. März 2007.
Nähere Informationen hierzu entnehmen Sie bitte www.info.jogustine.uni-mainz.de/senatsrichtlinie
Voraussetzungen / Organisatorisches:
N.B. previous acting experience is NOT required for participation!
FOCUS:
Watching a modern production of many plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, especially on film or tv but also in the theatre, we simply take for granted the various special effects that are used to suggest magic – something to which we are only too accustomed from all sorts of series. But how was magic conveyed (or implied) on the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage? What possibilities existed for wowing (or scaring!) the audience?
Well, one of these was quite simply the people’s willing belief in the otherworldly, in magic, in both God and the devil, in heaven and hell (a recent opinion poll among British 18-24-yer-old found that almost half believe in hell, but far fewer in heaven!), in ghosts, in ‘things that go bump in the night’ – and the English monarchs had their own, much-used astrologers. James I considered himself an expert on demons, writing books on the topic. And all this naturally provided useful material for contemporary dramatists.
We will be examining the background situation to spotlight these and other interesting factors, but the main drive of our seminar will be to actively consider, via hands-on work, what consequences our discoveries would have for those performing Early Modern English drama generally. Our primary focus will be on The Tempest, but there will be many allusions to both Macbeth and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. You will acquire an intimate knowledge of the first play, but will be expected to have at least read the second and third.
As pour title implies, we will be going beyond the magic focus to examine not only humour but also potential or actual evil and guilt in these plays. Our investigation will throw out other topics for discussion, such as the use of music and song, father-child relationships, the use and abuse of authority, the exploitation of others and of material resources, and many more. All this will provide ample inspiration for term papers.
APPROACH:
Academic studies tend to focus on Shakespeare’s drama as literary works, to be scrutinized and analysed… yet he wrote his plays to be performed, heard and seen, and NOT read! So note the key formulation in the title point to our central focus: ‘Playing madness and foolery…’, i.e. working with a Shakespeare script not from some academic/theoretical viewpoint but as something living, to be acted, its prime concern to convey the ‘message’, the meaning and poetry of the script, the nature of the characters to the audience, to make words and characters come alive, leave the page, hit the stage running, at full power, and leap across the gap into the audience’s ears, eyes and minds. Our close ‘detective’ work will explore the evidence in the script, together with our own powers of imagination – the approach adopted by Shakespeare actors then and now – sifting the script for clues regarding potential interpretations of the characters and their relationships and language, plot developments, and staging the play (there are very few stage directions in a Shakespeare script!).
In this way, you will discover that Shakespeare is NOT to be feared… in fact, his scripts reach out and seize you, wanting to be actively explored in depth, rewarding you with surprises and pleasures at his ingenuity as poet, character-developer, fellow-actor, and audience-wooer! Among other things, you will discover the key to unlocking soliloquies – among the most satisfying and fulfilling speeches an actor will ever perform, and a thrill to present onstage to a live audience.
We will actively explore actors’ strategies when working with Shakespeare scripts, and then focus on our core play, The Tempest, examining the script and experimenting with our own ways of staging some scenes and what they contain as well as playing big speeches and soliloquies: how does one involve fellow-actors; how do the speeches involve the audience? Small-team work will develop a possible staging of scenes from the plays, always focussed on defending your interpretation on the basis of what is in the script.
The approach will be hands-on, harnessing the practical aspects of performing Shakespeare and the physicality of the language in each workshop. As well as the weekly 90-minute workshops, we will also have two Saturday workshops (10 a.m. to 5 p.m.) to enable us to really get into what performing Shakespeare means. The dates for the Saturday workshops are 9th December, 2023 and 3rd February, 2024 (your team will be performing its interpretation of a scene from The Tempest at this second workshop!). You will also be doing discussion work on one of our two plays in teams between the in-class sessions.
This similar will thus be a distillation of Michael’s 46 years as a theatre director and Shakespeare specialist and 55 years as Shakespeare addict (!), for the last time before he – like Prospero at the end of The Tempest – finally enters retirement!
You will need your own PRINT – NOT e-book! – copy of the script, in the Arden THIRD series edition. Order it AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, as delivery from Brexit-plagued UK can take some time:
The Tempest, edited by Virginia Mason Vaughan and Alden T. Vaughan, pub. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, revised, 2011 edition (NOT the earlier, 1999 edition), ISBN 978-1-4081-3347-7. At the time of writing, it cost €9.99 e.g. from www.buecher.de
Possible topics for term papers will also enable you to reach out to other Early Modern English plays, examining matters of performance.
Questions? Drop Michael an email at mclaridg@uni-mainz.de
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