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Specialized Workshops
The Center for Actor Training offers a variety of specialized workshops throughout the year exploring a full range of disciplines including rhetoric, wit, clown, fight, voice, movement, public speaking and more!
Public Speaking Workshop - Click here to APPLY
LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD!
Learn to speak in front of any size audience and move them with your words.
- Free your natural voice
- Understand the basics of speech construction
- Tap into your truth
- Connect with and understand your audience
- Focus your message
- Persuade an audience of the validity of your message
- Inspire your audience to act
This workshop is designed to meet the needs of activists, students, community organizers, business people, educators, politicians, and concerned citizens who seek to improve their skills and confidence in connecting to an audience and delivering their message. It will include an introduction to Shakespeare & Company’s training methods and to Shakespeare’s text. Each participant will have the opportunity to refine and practice their own unique message on a subject of their choice. This is a time of urgency to empower people to let their voice be heard and to move others to action!
Friday (6pm-10pm) is an introduction to Shakespeare & Company’s aesthetic and an opportunity for the participants to shift gears and focus on their personal public message through a series of exercises involving voice, body and listening work.
Saturday (10am-6pm) focuses on the participants’ individual voice and experiences, which are incorporated into both a monologue that the actor has prepared for the class, and group explorations of rhetoric, audience connection and acting through listening that will inform participants to refine their own message.
Sunday (10am-2pm) completes the review of Shakespeare’s monologues and public speaking rhetoric, and concludes with the participants performing their newly focused personal public monologues with improved character, connection and presence.
DATES: October 4 to 6, 2019 or December 13 to 15, 2019
SCHEDULE: Friday, 6pm-10pm; Saturday, 10am-6pm; Sunday, 10am-2pm
TUITION: $100 USD
LOCATION: Shakespeare & Company campus in Lenox, MA
HOUSING: Available on campus for $40 per night
INSTRUCTORS: Tina Packer and Samuel "Mooly" Dinnar
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Women of Will: Following the Feminine in Shakespeare's Plays with Tina Packer
Inspired by Tina Packer’s work in researching and performing Women of Will, this acting workshop explores Shakespeare’s relationship to gender by focusing on the language used by female characters. For the workshop, participants will come prepared with a monologue from one of the female characters discussed in Tina’s book, Women of Will.
DATES: TBD
SCHEDULE: Friday, 6pm-10pm; Saturday, 10am-6pm; Sunday, 10am-4pm
TUITION: $400 USD
LOCATION: Shakespeare & Company campus in Lenox, MA
HOUSING: Available on campus for $35 per night
INSTRUCTOR: Tina Packer
**Union and alumni discounts available**
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Clowning for Actors with Michael F. Toomey - POSTPONED until Spring 2020
An exploration of Glorious Failures and Epic Imbalances. Being funny is not a requirement.
Throughout history, the Clown has played a vital role in our communities. Cross-culturally, the Clown has been looked to in order to reveal what is most human about us all and asks us to laugh about it. In these three days, actors will explore what is most human about themselves–revealing it and celebrating it publicly. This is a workshop in Clowning, an exploration of the Red Nose, Play, Complicity and how each of these are vital to the actor’s training.
DATES: TBA
SCHEDULE: Friday, 7pm-10pm; Saturday, 10am-10pm; Sunday, 10am-4pm
TUITION: $350 USD
LOCATION: Shakespeare & Company campus in Lenox, MA
HOUSING: Available on campus
INSTRUCTOR: Michael F. Toomey
**Union and alumni discounts available**
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Audition Intensive - POSTPONED until Spring 2020
The audition process can be very intimidating, but it is a necessary part of casting and all actors must learn to navigate it. During this workshop, you will discover ways to walk in and out of auditions with self-care by exploring the following:
- What story are you telling yourself and the room when you walk in and walk out?
- What are you communicating?
- What information are you unconsciously or consciously transmitting about yourself as an artist and a human?
- Is there any way to shift that experience?
Through a series of written and performed exercise, we will look at what audition pieces we choose, what clothes we wear, how we handle being seen, and what masks we wear. We will do research on what makes you “you”, and we will see if it’s possible to distill that and present it in the odd strange frame of the audition process.
Andrew has been developing and teaching this exciting workshop for several years. Look forward to uncovering some difficult truths with lots of laughter, playfulness and
DATES: TBA
SCHEDULE: Friday, 7pm-10pm; Saturday, 10am-10pm; Sunday, 10am-5pm
TUITION: $350 USD
LOCATION: Shakespeare & Company campus in Lenox, MA
HOUSING: Available on campus
INSTRUCTOR: Andrew Borthwick-Leslie
**Union and alumni discounts available**
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NYC Shakespeare Intensive
Shakespeare & Company is returning to NYC for a nine day acting intensive! Join us in our over 40 years of excellence in training actors to perform Shakespeare. We will inspire you to create a performance that is both compelling and accessible to today’s audience.
This workshop is designed to be either an introduction to or a refresher in the Shakespeare & Company approach to unlocking the vitality and power of the Shakespeare text for professional actors. Classes will include work in both Monologues and Scenes as well as Voice and Movement, Personal Connection, Dropping In, Feeding In and our other approaches to revealing the exuberant power of the Shakespeare text.
You know this is the training you’ve always wanted but have never been able to take a full month of rural immersion in Lenox. Do yourself a favor and treat yourself to the passionate connection you deserve!
DATES: TBD
TUITION: $850 USD (union and alumni discounts available)
From the Alumni
Maura Matarese
I attend at least one workshop at Shakespeare & Company each year as it always allows me an opportunity to grow as actor, to continue to free my actor’s instrument, to meet exciting new artists from around the world, and to spend time in an environment I love, with a faculty whom I deeply respect. more
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Shakespeare & Company is a professional live theatre company in the heart of the Berkshires, presenting a vibrant summer performance season featuring the works of Shakespeare in repertory with classic and contemporary plays. The Company offers one of the most extensive actor training programs by a regional theatre in the country, and is also home to an award-winning and nationally recognized theatre-in-education program.