Mondays, April 7 – May 26, 2014, 1–2:30 p.m., Library Conference Room
— from Jane Alden —
Much Ado About Nothing is a romantic comedy, with some of the most thrilling male/female exchanges ever written! It is the Quintessential War of the Sexes with a glorious, deeply satisfying outcome!
I always approach these plays in my workshops the way I would do if I was going to perform in or direct them. I find that technique is the most direct and pleasurable way of getting to a deeper understanding of the life within the plays. Never written with the intention of being read or studied, they were meant to be experienced directly by their audiences, and the keys to finding what that experience was meant to be, lie within the skills of an actor and a director, whose job it is to find the life behind the words in any piece of theatre and personalize it for the audience’s reception.
I will still approach it like that, but this time I’m approaching the process a little differently. I plan to use several different films of the play, as ‘study’ sources. I have found them to be a rich representation of different aspects of this text. We will read the text, but our discussion will center more around our visual, audiol perceptions.
We will watch, listen, and read aloud to ourselves, and find the play in that way. If you are interested in this workshop and have not read the play, please do not read it. We will discover it afresh, listening and watching it as similarly to the uninformed spectators who went to the plays in Shakespeare’s day as is humanly possible after four centuries of the passage of time, cultures and familiarity.
And Much Ado About Nothing is a wonderful play! I have just recently found the key into it that I’ve been looking for and that makes my heart sing, and I am in love with it and hope you will be, too!
Please contact me and sign up via email if you wish to attend or have questions. Cost: $70.00 for 8 sessions.
Recommended version for class use: The Folger Library edition, (available to be ordered from Darvill’s)
In case you don’t know from experience, Ms. Alden’s beautiful talent for integrating theater and literature in her Shakespeare workshop series is worth every effort to attend.