Staging Shakespeare in the Classroom

FAIN: FW-50057-09

Rhonda Gail Knight
Coker College (Hartsville, SC 29550-3797)

Studying the original staging practices of early modern drama will help me improve my upper-level course in Shakespeare. Students need to experience his plays as three-dimensional events, and learning more about original staging will help me develop activities and assignments that will reinforce the connections between the humanities and critical thinking. I will use many of the resources at the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, Virginia. My main objective is to observe the rehearsals and performances of the Actors' Renaissance Season (December-March). During this process, a small group of actors, working without a director, stage four or more early modern plays, using rehearsal techniques similar to those of early modern actors. These observations will teach me much that books cannot about the way that early modern actors would have worked. I will also research early modern staging at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Wash., D.C. and the Alderman Library at the University of Virginia.