Acting Shakespeare is Outrageous!

Act TwoHOLDING UP MIRRORS

 

 

 

for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature …

(Hamlet)

Shakespeare as a Cold Read

But masters, here are your parts, and I am to entreat you, request you and desire you, to con them by tomorrow night …

(Peter Quince to the rude mechanicals in A Midsummer Night’s Dream)

Think of this: you arrive at an audition where sides are provided. Perhaps you have been instructed by your teacher, or if you are already out of school and in New York City pounding the pavement, looking for work, perhaps you are being sent out by a theatrical agent and they have just gotten instructions from the casting director stating ...