O’ for a Muse of fire (Henry V)

FALSE ALARM!

*No Players were harmed in the making of this film.

Shakespeare Fight Club

Watch out Ed!!

Don't get on the wrong side of these two!

 Stay tuned for more rehearsal insights.

Let Julia introduce you to The Players!

More tales from Shakespeare Bootcamp

Getting a lesson or two from John Bell

Matilda: Well what a first two weeks! The players got to meet all the Bell team and we started in on voice, movement, comedy, Shakespeare’s life and times, dissected some of his sonnets, worked with John Bell on scenes, did a reading of The School For Wives and generally had a pretty awesome time!

Some things I have been thinking about this week: 

1. How much fun it is working with all the players and how exciting it is that we get to spend a whole year PLAYING together. 

2. How fast your brain needs to move when doing physical comedy. It’s all multi-tasking as Scotty says.

3. How compact and brilliant sonnets are: like little bite sized plays.

4. How brilliant Shakespeare was with his inventiveness of language and how he makes it so much easier for actors with Iambic Pentameter mirroring our very heart beat.

5. How important it is to tackle Shakespeare up on your feet and saying it aloud… as much as his language is something to be studied in an English class it’s still a PLAY to be performed!

Where to next? 

We start in on rehearsing the school’s shows next week which is great! We are armed with a new voice warm up and physical warm up and have been honing our language skills, our clowning and our singing in preparation. Team H dives in to Midsummer Madness come Monday and I CANNOT WAIT! Till next time. Matilda

Keep tuned for some more tales from The Players…

Meet the NEW Players

Bell Shakespeare is very excited to introduce The Players for 2012. 

Meet: Julia, Anthony, Matilda, Huw, Ed, Suzanne, Felix, and becuase she couldn’t get enough last year, Teresa is back!

The Players playing around

They have had a busy 2 weeks at Bell HQ learning about all things Shakespeare. Here’s a little of what they had to say…

Felix: Hey guys! So, we have made it to the end of the first two weeks of work here at Bell Shakespeare as part of The Players and it has been awesome. We’ve been working hard on workshop techniques and learning loads of games which are gonna be great fun to play all over the country. Last Friday we went and did an advanced driving course. They actually let a bunch of zany actors behind the wheel of 4 Kia Carnivals, hosed down the pavement and let us drive in at 70 km per hour the brakes on as hard as we possibly could. Good fun. Looking forward to rehearsals starting Monday for Macbeth: Undone and Midsummer Madness. Till next time. Felix

Who let these Players behind the wheel?

 Suzanne: What a whirl-wind first two weeks of The Players! Stand out moments = taking out the cones on both sides of the lane with the KIA, as I swerved out of control on a corner during our driving training at Eastern Creek (you can rest assured I won’t be driving fast enough on tour to make that happen again – SCAREEEEEY!); scenework and sonnets with John Bell – lots of fun; and smashing my shin into a ladder and ending up with a big bump and an almighty bruise during Scottie Witt’s comedy masterclass – OUCH! Oh the thing’s I do to get a laugh!!

All in all, it’s been a great couple of weeks – really excited to be working with the other Players – they’re a great bunch and the rest of the Bell team are lovely too! It looks like it’s shaping up to be a great year already – now to get into the rehearsal room….bring it on!

Keep tuned to hear about some more rehearsal adventures!

Hi from Belinda…

The (cold) Pooks in Tassie!

August has been a fun and varied part of our year long adventure.  Re-rehearsing Romeo and Juliet was such a beautiful experience.  Seeing The Fools (George, Adele, Teresa and Nathaniel) again and being around their wonderful focus and passion and good-humour.  I felt inspired by their work ethic, and their ability to make the work so much fun.  Our director Damien Ryan is such an incredible font of knowledge about Shakespeare it’s insane to be in the room with him.  He gives so much to his actors and his direction is incredibly specific, and he is hilarious!  I just loved laughing so much….!!

I felt very lucky to have the chance to come back to playing the Nurse and Lady Montague.  Adele as Juliet and Nathaniel as Romeo are just so easy to adore, I loved playing their “Mums”.  It was wonderful seeing everyone revisit their roles, and to work as a cast of eight again.

Hobart!

Since our Romeo and Juliet season finished in Melbourne us Pooks have travelled to Hobart, which is such an incredibly beautiful place.  Exploring the city with fellow Pook Paul has been a joy.  Last week we went to Port Arthur – that insanely well preserved historical site where so much suffering has occurred, both recent and not so recent.  For a place with such an horrific history, it feels extremely peaceful to be there.  Standing on the green fields now you can sense the things that have happened there, and when you consider what people are capable of making other people do – work in chain gangs felling trees whilst knee deep in mud, lashing people with whips until they’re unconscious, sleeping 1000 men in buildings suitable for 60, condemning men to sensory deprivation resulting in madness for many – and the list goes on…. it’s overwhelming.  Yet another example of our capacity as a species for “mountanish inhumanity” (Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More).  Our guide in Port Arthur finished our tour by telling us that if we learn about history we learn about ourselves.  We learnt a lot that day about what human beings are capable of doing, and the strength of the human spirit.  Tasmania is a truly beautiful and fascinating place.

Paul at Port Arthur

This week we’ve been in Dubbo, Molong and Orange in regional NSW. More on that soon!

- Belinda

Star treatment

Yum, thanks Wagga!

So last week we performed at Wagga Wagga Christian College and the players had the most amazing time. The year 4 class were inspirational and followed along with the story of A Midsummer Nights Dream so well, they should be very proud. Adele and Nathaniel said their workshop on As You Like It was probably one of their favorite experiences all year and could sense there was a lot of budding talent. On top of all this here is a photo of the amazing morning tea we received!! It was homemade by their very famous chef at the canteen.

Thanks for making our day!!!!

- Teresa (and The Fools)

Postcard from Tassie

Hobart, I have already decided after being here for four days, is the most beautiful city I’ve been to in this country! What a treat to wake up to a beautiful harbour, Georgian architecture and amazing hospitality! The seafood is amazing, Port Arthur terrifying and the coffee as good as any I’d get back in Melbourne or Sydney! After our two-week break from the Actors at Work tour, it’s nice to be welcomed back to our Macbeth Intensive and Midsummer Madness shows with the appreciation and hospitality of these fine Tasmanian folk! Our students have across the board been incredibly responsive to our work and as always, it’s a joy to perform Shakespeare to enthusiastic learners; teenagers open to the possibility of live storytelling.

Today, whilst visiting the Clarence High School in Bellerive, I had a few minutes to browse some framed photos hanging along the hallway of the school. Various alumni were proudly staring at me and I couldn’t help but smile when I came across a picture of one of Australia’s most celebrated stage and screen actresses, Essie Davis. Here she was, in all her glory, with an inscription that told me she had attended the Clarence High School from 1982-1985. I had to take a photo of it! Tasmania, it seems, boasts some of the greatest talent. I first saw Essie Davis perform in 1993, when she played the title role in Bell Shakespeare’s first production of Romeo and Juliet. Since then I have seen her in a handful of films, several more times on stage, once, most notably in Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Our theatre talent comes from such a wonderful variety of places across this country. So, Essie Davis began her career and perhaps love for Drama in a humble public school down here in Tasmania. It’s nice to be reminded that even though we often see Melbourne and Sydney as the hubs of Australia’s theatre world, our creatives, our actors, our performers come from all over the place. Talent is not confined or limited to the bigger cities! It made me wonder how many current students are out there, beginning their passion for theatre in high school, private or public, in Drama Classes and extra-curricular performance experiences. Chances are, so many of Australia’s future actors and theatre practitioners we have already met, at one school or another as we travel the country taking Shakespeare to the new generation. If those students are out there reading this, you better believe it. The theatre world has room for you and it doesn’t matter whether you hail from a state capital or small regional town, island, coastal village or outer suburb. Essie Davis would surely agree!

- Paul

“Yea, noise? Then I’ll be brief” – Romeo And Juliet

Our final pre-show set up, all props in place and ready for the closing show.

Well, our Melbourne season of Romeo And Juliet has come and gone in the blink of an eye!!! It was an absolute joy to re-mount this production for a new space and new audiences. The National Theatre in St Kilda has been our home for the last week, while we performed two shows a day, and what a glorious old theatre she is (if a little creaky on those original audience seats).

It had been about five months since we performed Romeo And Juliet in Sydney, but all the lines and blocking came back to me, as if Id been performing the show this whole time. It’s strange how memory prioritises things, after 5 months I could bust out all Juliet’s lines without a hiccup, and yet when checking into a hotel, I need a moment to remember my own address!

Revisiting a role like Juliet was a true gift; it was like all this time between productions the character never actually left, but had a little room of her own in some part of my consciousness, where she settled in and became embedded in my everyday life. Opening that door and letting her out in Melbourne, seemed the most natural and effortless of things…except for the dancing in the sand, that did actually require A LOT of effort, my calves are still recovering …and bits of red sand are still turning up, no matter how many times I shower!!!! It’s like they have a mind of their own.

So it’s goodbye to Melbourne and Romeo And Juliet and hello Albury and Midsummer Madness.

- Adele

Melbourne bound…

The Hamlet Seminar in Sydney this week

While you are all on school holidays, The Players are busy at Bell HQ in Sydney this week, working with our Artistic Director John Bell and Associate Artistic Director Peter Evans, in the rehearsal room on some exciting (but secret!) projects.

On Monday we presented The Hamlet Seminar for HSC students at The Seymour Centre’s York Theatre. Our Resident Artist in Education James Evans presented the seminar while The Players acted out key scenes in various ways to show how different interpretations can be, how a director and actors can completely change intentions behind Shakespeare’s words to create new meaning.

On Saturday we’ll head to Melbourne to present The Hamlet Seminar for VCE students at The National Theatre in St Kilda. It’s the first year we’ve presented the seminar in Melbourne and we can’t wait.

Next up in August we’ll be bringing our production of Romeo And Juliet to The National Theatre along with our six tonnes of sand that line the stage. Where has it been hiding since we last performed the show in March? Hmmm… it’s a mystery.

But it’s not all for students. Your teachers can also take part in some of our special events. We’ll be holding a special launch to celebrate our Melbourne season of Romeo And Juliet at the beautiful Sofitel Melbourne on Collins on Wednesday 20 July from 5pm. To book your place email us today at learning@bellshakespeare.com.au

Finally, teachers who want to skill up or learn some new tools for the classroom can come along to our Melbourne Teacher Forum: Shakespeare in the National Curriculum on Saturday 30 July, 10am – 4pm.

So Melbourne students and teachers – we’re on our way! We can’t wait to meet you all and work with you at these special events. Remember, if you want to know more, check out our website, send us an email at learning@bellshakespeare.com.au or give us a call on 1300 305 730.

Love the Bell Shakespeare Learning team!