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University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
August 10 – 14, 2009

WORKSHOPS
Playing the Text - How Verse and Prose Work
Shakespearean Monologues: Performance and Study
Sshakespearean Scenes: Performance and Study

Location:  Urbana, IL
Cost: $1,430
Includes Tuition/Housing/Lunch/Cooking Facilities
Deadline to register:  July 10, 2009

Overview: The goal of this week-long intensive series of classes is the enhancement of the ability to act, teach and/or direct the works of William Shakespeare.  For those participants who are actor-teachers, the classes will develop a way of working on Shakespearean text,  and an opportunity to put these skills to use in the performing of a monologue and scenes. For the director-teachers, the work will introduce a method for helping actors understand, activate, and speak the text. For all teachers, the courses will illuminate a way of understanding mood, motivation, action, and character through the examination of the text in both verse and prose.

Playing the Text - How Verse and Prose Work:  This course is focused on developing the ability to unlock the action embedded in the text. Sonnets, monologues, and scenes are examined to demonstrate how the actor can apply analytical tools to make the language clear, purposeful, and effective. Learning to play "verbal action" and making the language specific and consistent with an objective is the goal of this first class in the series.

Instructor: Brant Pope has a thirty-year career in both academic and professional theatre. His work as an actor and director has been seen off-Broadway, in regional theatre, and in film and television. For eleven years, Brant was Director of the FSU/Asolo Conservatory for Actor Training and Associate Artistic Director of the Asolo State Theatre, in Sarasota, Florida. He is the author of the play, Sins of Omission, and his many publications focus on the American theatre and in particular, the work of playwright Arthur Miller. He has directed more than 20 Shakespearean productions. Brant has held academic positions at Wright State University, Kalamazoo College, Virginia Commonwealth University, Florida State University, and from 2001-2007, was Head of Acting and Directing at Penn State University. He is the newly appointed Head of the Department of Theatre at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He earned his MFA from Florida State University, and a Ph.D in American Studies from Michigan State University.

Shakespearean Monologues: Performance and Study:  This session puts into practice the method developed in Playing the Text by rehearsing and performing monologues from comedies, histories and tragedies.  Professor Anderson will work with both prose and verse to help the participants fulfill the enormous potential of these speeches.

Instructor: Robert G. Anderson is an associate professor in the Department of Theatre at the University of Illinois, as well as a working actor, director and producer. In ten seasons with the Utah Shakespearean Festival, he has appeared in Henry V, Timon of Athen and Hamlet, among others. As an actor, he has also performed with the Shakespeare Festivals of Baltimore, Idaho and Illinois (most recently in Taming of the Shrew and Titus Andronicus), Tacoma Actors Guild, The Empty Space (Seattle) and Appletree Theatre. Directing credits include productions with Milwaukee Shakespeare, Idaho Shakespeare Festival, Huron Theatre (where he served as Artistic Director for three seasons) and, for the past five years, Utah Shakespearean Festival's New American Playwrights Project. Most recently, he staged a critically acclaimed production of Richard II for Actors Revolution in Chicago. He is a founder and resident director of the American Shakespeare Theatre Company, an international touring theatre. He received his MFA from the Professional Theater Training Program at the University of Delaware.

Shakespearean Scenes: Performance and Study: This session puts into practice the method developed in Playing the Text by rehearsing and performing scenes from comedies, histories and tragedies.  Professor Keys will work with participants in two or three scenes each, allowing everyone to work on a variety of characters.

Instructor: Henson Keys is a veteran of over 120 productions as an actor and director in New York and with professional theatres across the country including the New York, Utah, Alabama, North Carolina, and Illinois Shakespeare Festivals, the McCarter Theatre, Yale Repertory, Asolo, Walnut Street, Meadowbrook, Folger, Cleveland Playhouse, and Coconut Grove. Recent professional directing work includes Julius Caesar for North Carolina Shakespeare, Harvey for Utah Shakespeare, Shaw for Asolo Conservatory, and The Man Who Came to Dinner, Misalliance, The Illusion, and The Millionairess for Alabama Shakespeare. Previously, he headed graduate training programs at Ohio University and at Alabama Shakespeare, where he held the ASF Endowed Chair of the University of Alabama. At UIUC, he has played King Lear, and directed productions of Everyman, Angels in America, Othello, Virtual Devotion, Gross Indecency, A Chorus Line, and Shakespeare's R & J as well as La Traviata and La Boheme for the Opera Program.

Click HERE to go to UIUC's web page and to register for this Intensive

FSU/Asolo Conservatory: June 12, 2009
University of Washington:  no longer accepting applications
University of Cincinnati:  no longer accepting applications
University of Illinois:  no longer accepting applications

All Intensives are offered by Institutions that are members of U/RTA. 
Each Institution is responsible for its own specific programming and any related services (housing, meal plans, etc.)