Shakespeare-Sort-of-Stuff

This week, in preparation for my upcoming fall IB Literature and Performance course, I read Freeing Shakespeare's Voice by Kristin Linklater, an acting and voice theorist I studied in my course at Yale. The book builds on her work of allowing a natural voice to emerge (as opposed to a false, forced, or constrained voice) through centering ideas about character and situation in the body, projecting the voice from there, as opposed to originating in the mind/head, thus creating voice through the throat alone. The book was a good reminder of these principles and offered a number of activities that I can use while teaching Shakespeare specifically.

I also read a farce entitled The Complete Works of Shakespeare (abridged). I had heard of this play and seen clips before but decided to read it in order to see if it would be something we could perform here at CA. Still on the fence.

What is a Summer without Harry Potter?

My daughter wanted to re-watch one of the Harry Potter movies, so we chose Chamber of Secrets, not my #1 favorite but I like them all. As we were watching, we were discussing some differences from the book so I decided to reread the book (so much better than the movie). This was a good precursor to what came next -- Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. It was interesting to revisit the characters but not really a great read. I don't know if that is due to the play form or the impulse to revisit common plot devices. Either way, it felt a bit flip/sparse/cutesy/eh. I love the long world-building descriptions of the book which were missing here with a focus on dialogue. I did think there were some interesting things going on theatrically with lighting effects and time montages, and I am glad I read it and would see a production just to see the way it staged those interesting parts. But I doubt I will reread it on a regular basis for pleasure the way that I do with the original series.

2 books of (somewhat scholarly) non-fiction about women characters in theater

This week, I read two interesting books about women and theater. The first is Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical by Stacy Wolf. I liked it, but it was a little repetitive at points and somewhat intractable in terms of its overarching analysis (it felt a little like a dissertation-turned-book). The second is Women of Will: The Remarkable Evolution of Shakespeare's Female Characters by Tina Packer, the founding artistic director of Shakespeare and Company. I liked this one a lot, although she too has a clear agenda (arguing, for example, that Shakespeare had a life-changing love affair with Aemilia Bassano) and sometimes goes a bit astray on a tangent; however, her lifelong experience with and passion for the works of Shakespeare shines through in the text, making me want to bring her to CA for a performance and go to her workshop in MA. Both books are good resources for one of my extended essay advisees, and both books gave me some meaty things to wrap my brain around as I dive back into specific course planning this August.