Summer Webinar Series: SHAKESPEARE IN PERFORMANCE

In this in-depth, five-part series, we’ll examine the craft of bringing the Bard’s text to life on stage. Hosted by Artistic & Executive Director Alan Stanford and featuring exclusive performances by our company of PICT actors. This series is free and appropriate for all ages.

Can’t tune in live? Your registration includes a Replay link to watch each of our webinars at your leisure. Enjoy in your own time or share with family and friends!

SESSIONS:

SPEAKING SHAKESPEARE | July 3
We will examine Shakespeare’s use of language and his verse forms, as well as the rhythms of his prose. Why Iambic Pentameter? Why the use of the sonnet form? Why mix verse and prose in the same scenes? With the added voices of PICT actors, we will listen to the way that Shakespeare wrote and examine how his use of words actually dictated they way they should be spoken.

SHAKESPEARE’S WOMEN | July 10
From Juliet to Rosalind, from Cleopatra to Titania, his female characters are some of the richest in all of classic drama. With the help of some of PICT’s finest we will demonstrate the power of Shakespeare’s women and how they very often dominate the male characters in the play – just by being smarter.

SHAKESPEARE’S HEROES | July 17
All too often the hero of any story can tend to be a little bland. Not so with Shakespeare.
His heroes are often hidden and erupt into such acts of heroism that they end up as the dominant character of the play. Shakespeare’s heroes are both male and female: characters who come through adversity with lessons learnt and morals intact. With so many to choose from we will select four to demonstrate Shakespeare’s capacity to write heroes of distinction.

SHAKESPEARE’S VILLIANS | July 24
The Elizabethan stage and the Jacobean stage that followed has presented some of the most memorable villains ever created. In the entire cannon of Shakespeare, he only describes twice a character as simply “villain”, but there are so many more born of wicked circumstance. We will discuss some of the worst (and best) of the cannon and examine what makes them so intriguing.

ANATOMY OF A SHAKESPEARE PLAY | July 31
All too often newcomers to Shakespeare can be put off by the language and the form of the writing. They read the plays as if they were novels. Plays are built with a specific structure and form, and in this class, we will examine the foundation of one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, Macbeth.
We will show how the play is structured and how the plot develops, as well as its modern day relevance to the rule of any despot. Shakespeare wrote this play hundreds of years before Lord Acton famously wrote that “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” but Shakespeare understood that principle, as we will demonstrate. 

We are happy to present these webinars free of charge as a part of our PICT Educates initiatives.  If you would like to support this and further PICT digital programming, please visit our Donate Page. Your generosity sustains us while our stages are dark.