Welcome to Acting with Autumn!

In this series, MFA Candidate in Directing, Autumn Tustin, has created various tutorials for you to use in the classroom and rehearsal room.

Contents: About Autumn |A Short Disclaimer |How to Use this Page |How to Warm up for a Shakespearean Performance |Tools for Shakespearean Line Delivery |Tools for Decoding Shakespeare

About Autumn

My name is Autumn and I have always loved Shakespeare! In middle school, I was the nerd reading Romeo and Juliet for fun, and in high school, I lived in Europe and was lucky enough to see a few shows at the Globe, cementing my deep love for theatre. During undergrad, I studied Art and Education, but I kept feeling like something was missing, so I went back to school and got another degree in Drama and Musical Theatre in Nashville, TN! When I was there, I was chosen for the Nashville Shakespeare Festival’s Apprentice Company, where I spent about 5 months intensely studying physical and classical theatre techniques, performing 2 professional shows in repertory. It was an incredible experience and I’ve continued to study Shakespeare, perform professionally, and teach what I know to anyone who is excited to learn! Right now, I am combining all the things I love and am studying to get my Master’s Degree in Directing. I hope through my short videos and blurbs you can learn something new, and who knows, maybe you’ll fall in love with Shakespeare too!

A Short Disclaimer

The reality is that everyone has a different interpretation of how to perform Shakespeare: some approaches focus on the voice, some focus on the text, some the relationship between actor and audience. The truth is, they are all legitimate. There is no one correct way to do Shakespeare, so take some of that pressure off yourself to be perfect.

This page is not at all meant to tear down any approach but rather to build an understanding of how to act Shakespeare for someone with little-to-no previous experience. This series was developed using tools from my own training and experience and it might differ from the next Shakespeare professional’s advice. What matters is that you find the best way that you connect with the text and breathe life and energy into it! The good news is that we all get to learn and try something new!

How to Use this Page

I’ve broken my teaching into three sections: “How to Warm-up for Shakespearean Performance,” “Tools for Line Delivery,” and “Tools for Decoding Shakespeare.” Here’s a little bit of what is included in each section:

In each section you’ll find a few short videos of me explaining the idea a little bit further, or giving examples from Shakespearean text. The videos are meant to be short, because the truth is, some of these things are conversations you’ll need to have with your director! I can only give you the basics, but it’s up to you to take it further. The best thing I can recommend is to get your rehearsal clothes on, script out, and pencil ready to take notes! Then when you come across a new idea, you can try it out right away. Let’s dive in, shall we?

How to Warm up for a Shakespearean Performance

When it comes to Shakespearean performance, the warm-up is not to be skipped! I say this with all the experience of having skipped my own warm-ups and regretting that fact wholeheartedly, so pretty please learn from my mistakes and do your best to physically and vocally warm up before every rehearsal and performance.

Shakespeare’s texts can be incredibly dense so you want to make sure you’re prepared for whatever is thrown your way. Here are some great vocal warmups to help you prepare your face, mouth, and tongue for the adventure that lies ahead. I’ve created a video and text guide to lead you through my basic warm-up.

The Vocal Warm-up

1. Start with stretching and massaging the face (01:26)

2. Lion face/Lemon face/tongue stretch (2:13)

3. TI-TI-TAH, DI-DI-DAH, NI-NI-NAH, LI-LI-LAH, KI-KI-KAH, GI-GI-GAH (3:10)

4. TI-TI-TI-TI-TI-TI-TI-TI-TI-TAH DI-DI-DI-DI-DI-DI-DI-DI-DI-DAH NI-NI-NI-NI-NI-NI-NI-NI-NI-NAH LI-LI-LI-LI-LI-LI-LI-LI-LI-LAH KI-KI-KI-KI-KI-KI-KI-KI-KI-KAH GI-GI-GI-GI-GI-GI-GI-GI-GI-GAH (5:00)

5. MA-NA-LA THA-VA-ZA MEE-NEE-LEE THEE-VEE-ZEE MY- NY- LY THY- VY- ZY MOO-NOO-LOO THOO-VOO-ZOO MO-NO-LO THO- VO-ZO (5:45)

6. She stood on the balcony, inexplicably mimicking his hiccuping, whilst amicably welcoming him in (7:03)

7. Thomas Tattertoot, took taught twine, to tie ten twigs, to two tall trees (7:25)

8. Bone-prop practice (7:32)

The Physical Warm-up

Once you’ve completed your facial warm-up, it’s time to move on to a whole body warm-up. I didn’t include a video for this one because it’s important for you to take ownership of the songs that you want to include and the physical movements you prefer. I’ve included my personal warm-up, but feel free to add anything you think might help or make changes to anything. Just remember what’s most important: getting yourself physically ready to jump into character!

1. Pick 4-5 upbeat songs and make a warmup playlist. Get it playing and let’s begin!

2. Find about 3 feet of space around you and then start stepping side to side, toe-touching on the beat. Once you’ve gotten into your groove, raise your arms “scarecrow style” and start doing the following arm movements, maintaining your toe-touching throughout! Try to do them each for about 20 seconds without giving your arms a break in between.

• Make loose fists and start small arm circles forward, gradually making the circles larger
• Switch to small arm circles backwards and gradually make the circles larger
• Keeping the scarecrow stance, flatten your hands and face your palms backward (thumbs down), then bounce them off of an imaginary wall behind you
• Keeping the scarecrow stance, Imagine a doorknob in each hand and turn them back and forth with tense fingers
• Keeping the scarecrow stance, make each hand a thumbs down, then bounce your arms up and down
• Keeping the scarecrow stance BUT letting your arms dangle at the elbow, switch to jumping side to side on the beat

1. Shake your arms out and switch to doing squats! This should give your arms a break and work those thighs, each for 20 seconds.
   • Regular squats
   • Sumo squats (legs out at an angle)
   • Pulsing small movement just above normal squat
   • Regular squats, but when you come up adjust the weight to one side and point your toe on the floor
2. Shake your legs out and reach up to the ceiling! Then:
   • Slowly loosen down, eventually finding a frog stance on the floor
   • Move into alternating Cat and Cow yoga poses
   • Child’s pose
   • Frog again, then stick your behind in the air and slowly roll up, one vertebrae at a time
   • Find and hold center, breathing in and out for a minute with eyes closed
3. Finally, I finish with a few high energy things to make sure my blood is pumping! I try to do 30 seconds each.
   • High knees
   • butt kicks
   • Jumping Jacks
   • Final 8 count “shake down” of arms and legs

Tools for Shakespearean Line Delivery

Thought Chunking

Have you ever seen Shakespeare performed live? There’s the excitement and buzz of the audience, the beautiful set and props onstage, then the actors make their entrance and . . . the audience has no idea what the actors are saying! Don’t worry! This is normal.

Typically, audience ears have to spend about 5-10 minutes adjusting to the sound of classical text. Shakespeare used a lot of words to explain his ideas, and it’s pretty easy for audiences to get lost if they aren’t in the habit of attending Shakespearean shows. As actors, it’s our job to make sure that the audience is able to follow the plot no matter what, and that is where “thought chunking” your text is incredibly helpful!

In monologues, the text usually explores one big idea at a time. Instead of trying to act and emphasize each and every word (that’s exhausting!), try figuring out what the big “idea” is, and see if you can shape your acting choices around the idea, or thought chunk, that needs to be communicated.

In the video, I approach the first four lines of Portia’s monologue in The Merchant of Venice: “The quality of mercy is not strained;/It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven/Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;/ It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.”

To me, these first four lines can be broken into two small thought chunks. The first one is about mercy being easy and free (like the rain), and the second begins the discussion of how mercy affects those who give and receive it. Now that I know what it means and what the two thoughts are, I can communicate the thoughts instead of focusing on the exact words that I’m saying. It sounds much more natural, and it helps the audience understand the idea I’m trying to communicate. Did you hear that?

Go through your text and start marking the thought chunks you see with parenthesis. Some ideas build on the last, so your thought chunks may bleed into each other and that’s okay! How will you connect your acting of the thought chunks so the audience sees that connection and build? Some ideas are directly opposing the one that came right before. How can you make it obvious when one idea ends and another starts?

Thought chunking your text is also an incredibly helpful memorization tool! Instead of trying to remember words that you don’t normally use with your friends, remember the order of thought chunks. Most likely, once you remember the idea, the specific Shakespearean words will follow.

Thinking on the Line

We all know Shakespeare can be long-winded but some of his plays are five, even six hours long (and since the majority of his audience was in the pit, they were standing that whole time)! There are some tricks to shortening the run time and keeping everyone interested in the action of the play, one of which is called “thinking on the line.”

Instead of letting the lightbulb moments or motivation happen when it is quiet or by taking a long and thoughtful pause, try “thinking on the line.” This means that the lightbulb goes on as you say the line. You are essentially discovering your emotions, ideas, and character as it is all coming out of your mouth. This invigorates the text and forces the actors to energize their words instead of their pauses.

Here’s why it’s so hard for contemporary actors to embrace this style of acting: it doesn’t feel natural! We’ve been taught to experience emotion and then let the audience see what we’re feeling. There are so many powerful moments in contemporary drama where text is unnecessary: we completely understand the character without them having to use words. If possible, try to think of Shakespearean acting as the opposite of that. We have to have the words to know what the character is feeling, and it’s only by using the words that the audience can fully understand what the characters are going through. The other truth is that if Shakespearean actors took the time to more naturally move from one emotion to another, we’d be looking at a twelve hour Romeo and Juliet. Nobody wants to sit for that long, so that’s why thinking on the line is a great skill to start trying out!

Contemporary versus Classical Approaches

Let’s talk just a bit about Contemporary versus Classical text approaches. We’ve all watched enough Netflix to know that Pretty Little Liars is quite a bit different from Romeo and Juliet, but why? What are the hallmark differences?

In this section, we will start by reviewing two videos that can be found on YouTube. Video 1, featuring Paapa Essiedu’s interpretation of Hamlet’s soliloquy from act three scene one and Video 2, featuring Andrew Scott’s interpretation of the same soliloquy.

If you watch the two videos above, you’ll see two very different approaches to acting Shakespearean text, specifically Hamlet’s famous soliloquy. Paapa Essiedu (in the production at the Royal Shakespeare Company) takes on the challenge with many classical skills driving his performance. His mouth, body, and voice are physically invested (he’s definitely warmed up!), he’s thinking on the line, taking cues from the text by focusing on alliterations and the sound quality of the vowels/consonants. His performance is gripping on the stage because he’s communicating thought chunks and keeping the audience engaged with each operative word.

Andrew Scott, on the other hand, is approaching the text with a much more contemporary style. His body isn’t as physically engaged, but his facial expressions are raw and powerful. He takes his time with the text, reveling in each new discovery as he explains it to the audience, bringing them very close to his emotions. Instead of communicating each thought chunk, he has chosen specific moments to drive home with the audience, sometimes speeding through text in order to find his perfect moment.

In my opinion, Andrew’s style is gorgeous for the screen and Paapa’s style is perfectly suited for the stage. Consider what your production is going to look like and which style you may want to adopt. How can you make sure the last row of the theatre gets the same experience as the front? Are your facial expressions too large for a camera? These are great questions to consider as you shape your performance.

Consonants, Vowels, and Alliteration

Shakespeare is known for making up words but at the end of the day he built them with the same old consonants and vowels that we’ve always used. In typical Shakespearean style, he left us clues for how to interpret what he wanted to see in the performance.

When you break down your text to the basics, it may offer you a glimpse into the mindset he had whilst writing different characters. For instance, Titania’s monologue starts out with powerful sounding consonants and short vowels, the first thought chunk ending with b’s and t’s to drive home her displeasure at the circumstances she and Oberon find themselves in:

These are the forgeries of jealousy:
And never, since the middle summer's spring,
Met we on hill, in dale, forest or mead,
By paved fountain or by rushy brook,
Or in the beached margent of the sea,
To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind,
But with thy brawls thou hast disturb'd our sport.

We can interpret from the shortness of the vowel sounds and the harsher consonants that Titania is a powerful character, almost spitting some of her sounds at whoever is meant to receive the monologue.

In one of Helena’s monologues, we see a completely different kind of writing. She has many open O and I sounds, allowing for elongation of the words. The consonants are softer and less biting in nature: “Things base and vile, holding no quantity, Love can transpose to form and dignity. Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. Nor hath Love’s mind of any judgment taste; Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste. And therefore is Love said to be a child, Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.”

We can assume from the text that Helena (after getting through some whining at the start) is inspired by love and speaking more poetically. She’s painting a picture with fluffy clouds, as opposed to Titania’s dark and stormy ones.

Lastly, Shakespeare often used alliteration, antithesis, and assonance to catch the audience’s attention. Read your text aloud to get a better sense of what you may be missing by just scanning the text in your mind!

Tools for Decoding Shakespeare

Context

It may seem obvious, but the first thing to do when approaching Shakespeare is to read the play- in its entirety! Shakespearean conflict moves quickly and often without much context, so it’s important to have your own “mind map” of what’s coming- for you as the actor as well as for your character. You may even want to draw a physical map of characters and relationships as you read because intricate character interactions can happen in the blink of an eye and affect the entire play!

Grab a copy of No Fear Shakespeare if this process intimidates you, and get cracking! At the very least, watch or listen to the entire play so you understand what’s happening before you get to rehearsal. There’s nothing worse than showing up and being surprised by your own lines, so do your homework!

Lastly, remember the original context for Shakespeare’s productions: people paid a penny to stand in the yard for three hours and watch the story unfold. They’d bring tomatoes and rotten fruit to throw at bad actors, and they’ll belly laugh at all the inappropriate jokes! Take some of the pressure off yourself to be perfectly academic about it and have fun figuring out what it all means.

Finding and Using Operative Words

Operative words are exactly as they sound: words that operate the sentence and paint a picture for audiences. As I mentioned in the video, modern actors tend to emphasize pronouns because we’re used to contemporary playwriting where comparison of people and circumstances is often at the heart of the conflict. Shakespeare took a lot of time and energy to make sure what was most important was rendered clearly through Iambic Pentameter. Using scansion to decode Iambic Pentameter, we find that the stressed syllable rarely lands on a pronoun. In other words, the operative word is most often a verb or more interesting word within the line.

Operative words should go hand in hand with all the other skills of Shakespearean analysis so don’t worry about getting it wrong because all the other clues should point you in the right direction! I recommend circling the operative words within your lines as the very first step of analysis. This step can help you get a clearer picture of the story and where it is going before you dive into the details. Then, when you start to decode further with scansion, you should find the lines scan to prop up or pop out the operative words you’ve already marked. Consequently, if all your other tools are at odds with your operative words, you may be trying to emphasize a word that isn’t meant to be.

Iambic Pentameter

Iambic Pentameter is literally the heartbeat of Shakespeare! Iambic Pentameter is the style of verse that Shakespeare used in many of his plays. This has been written about over and over and over again by many academics, so I’ll spare you the gruesome details and simply say: 1 line of text holds 10 beats (syllables), usually made of 5 “feet,” or beat sets. An “iambic” foot is meant to sound like a heartbeat- unstressed, STRESSED- so ten strung together in one line usually sounds like this: unstressed, STRESSED, unstressed, STRESSED, unstressed, STRESSED, unstressed, STRESSED, unstressed, STRESSED.

The process of figuring out which syllables are stressed or unstressed in your lines is called scansion. Scansion can very quickly get very intimidating, but the most important thing to remember about Iambic Pentameter is that Shakespeare used this style to make his lines sound natural: the rhythm of the audiences’ heartbeat is the rhythm in which it’s all meant to be said! If you get lost in trying to figure out the scansion, go back to basics and you’ll most likely be in the perfect spot.

Word and Sentence Structure

And now for the icing on the cake, the glue that holds everything together, the last detail to join the party: the structure of Shakespearean writing! It may sound incredibly boring but parsing out what each and every punctuation mark in Shakespearean verse means is exciting stuff! Now, truthfully, not every comma has to mean something, but isn’t it more likely that the man who spent decades of his life authoring detailed stories of love, loss, and ghosts in iambic pentameter would place punctuation meaningfully? I should think so! While we know that editors have added or removed punctuation in their various editions throughout the years, attending to punctuation is still a critical way of making sense of the work.

When you find a punctuation mark within any line of verse, take a moment to sit with it. Commas, hyphens, dashes, colons, semi-colons: he was specific and careful about how he placed these. A comma could signal a slight change in thought or a moment of catch breath for the actor. Colons and semi- colons often indicated a thought continuing, or finding another path. Some characters have punctuation marks scattered throughout their monologues, giving the sense that an emotion is heightened, or maybe that the character is out of breath or easily distracted. Some characters have steady verse with few interruptions, portraying confidence and courage in the face of disaster or intense action.

Any ending punctuation mark (period, exclamation point, question mark) is a full stop. The actor can take a full breath, but must keep moving. An idea or thought has concluded, and a new sentence will either build on it or turn from it. Either way, each ending should be marked by the actor and a choice should be made.