An Intense Weekend with Shakespeare & Company
What an exciting weekend I just had with Shakespeare & Company at the Weekend Intensive in NYC! From Friday through Sunday, the illustrious Dennis Krausnick led myself and 12 other students through voice work, physical exploration, text analysis, and emotional discovery on a journey to deeper, truer expression of Shakespeare's timeless characters. It was amazing. Though I've participated in similar exercises in other classes I've participated in, this was my first official introduction to Linklater technique. I'm always pleasantly shocked to feel where my voice sits once it's been properly warmed up and breathed through, but more intriguing is that opening my voice opens up so many other corners of my instrument; tears and wrath and laughter alike are all much closer than I normally keep them. Even more illuminating was our work with the First Folio; to seek out clues to the character at so close detail as the very spelling and capitalization revealed whole new rooms (entire floors, to be honest) in the blueprint of the character.
I am so grateful to Shakespeare & Company for allowing me to share in this experience with them, to my classmates for the courage and generosity they brought to class each day, and most of all to Dennis for guiding us all through it.