I recently took an eight-week Shakespeare class at a well-known acting school in the city. Like for most people, Shakespeare was an enigma, and the class, surprisingly open to even non-actors, was my chance to demystify the Bard. There were around ten people in the class. Some were pros, but they assured me newbies would not feel out of place. Our teacher was a well-known theater director, and taking a Shakespeare class with him was surreal.
Our teacher began the class by introducing Shakespeare. The man was a genius who knew over 30,000 words and wrote a lot. He told us another interesting tidbit: pay attention to the words, not the punctations, because others punctuated Shakespeare’s works after his death. He said one of the leading Shakespeare actors, Mark Rylance, always uses his own punctuation when performing Shakespeare. Our teacher also added that, in his view, not everything Shakespeare wrote was genius; some were mediocre and even bad. But rather than lessening his stature, this observation made him more appealing and human.
We had to come prepared with a monologue for the first class. I scoured the net, looking for something age-appropriate and short. Portia’s monologue (Act 2, Scene 1) from Julius Ceaser seemed a good choice. In the scene, Portia, sensing her husband, Brutus, is up to something, urges him to confide in her. Sensing his reluctance, she reminds him of their love and her steadfastness. The monologue, however, presented a physical obstacle. One of Portia’s lines is, “Upon my knees, I charm you,” and clearly must be said kneeling, which was physically impossible for me; I did not trust my ability to get up with elan. Finally, I selected Cressida’s monologue (Act 3, Scene 2) from Troilus and Cressida, where she eventually admits her love to him. It was a young girl’s monologue, but how often would I get to do a love monologue? It also seemed like an ideal monologue to go overboard with my emotions since I usually have a deadpan style. I was overwhelmed with the enormity of the moment as I performed the monologue and received the teacher’s perfunctory “great.” I just freaking performed a Shakespeare monologue; how cool is that.
Then, the grind began. We were asked to use the Power Thesaurus and the Oxford Dictionary (the second-in-line source) to translate our monologues, word by word, to a pizza parlor-appropriate language. This meant that the words had to be simple enough to be spoken and understood by everyday people during dinner conversations in pizza parlors. The rules of translation were rigid. Every word had to be translated. Even more challenging was that we were not allowed to change the order of words and had to stick to Shakespeare’s order even if it did not make sense when translated. This was to avoid the tendency of writing the “gist.” It was brutal work, and we were partnered to keep each other in check from cutting corners, a job my partner took seriously. My short monologue took two weeks to translate; imagine how long it would take to translate one lead role.
Once the translations were done, our teacher excitedly said, “Now we can play.” The translations were primarily used to help us understand the text at a deeper level. However, they were also employed in the “Shakespeare sandwich” technique. It is easy for novices to get stiff and precious when saying Shakespeare’s otherworldly lines. In the sandwich technique, we first say the original line, then its translation in pizza parlor language, and then the original line again. Actors always say the translated lines smoothly and with feeling since they are relatable. We were then asked to transfer those exact emotions and ease to the original text, and voila, it came alive. The sandwich technique is challenging since saying the translation throws you off, making you forget the original lines, but it improves with practice.
My teacher’s skills were evident during my performance of the Cressida monologue. He cut down all my heavy and loud emoting and asked me where Cressida and Troilus would likely meet. It was clearly among a crowd during a party, and she would have to reveal her innermost thoughts almost in a whisper. He also chided me during the sandwich method since I had cut many corners in translation and used the gist method. He was a taskmaster and would not let go until I did correctly. He also asked me to emphasize the “seem” in the “Hard to seem won” line because Cressida confesses to Troilus that she was pretending to be difficult to woo. That emphasis changed everything. I also made the embarrassing mistake of saying “shut” my mouth instead of “stop” my mouth; the latter meant asking for a kiss, as the Bard intended.
Next in the class was pairing up with a partner to do a scene. This assignment is the bane of most acting classes and unfair to the students who pay big bucks because absences are frequent, and you can be left in the lurch like I was. My scene partner, who had taken this class multiple times, was absent constantly although enthusiastic over email. I almost gave up on the class, especially since I was dealing with work and health issues, but somewhere deep down, I could not let go of this tryst with Shakespeare without trying one last time. I told my scene partner I had joined this class with the dream of performing Shakespeare and asked him not to waste my time by making false promises about showing up. That did the trick, and he came through.
I was tasked with picking a scene and chose a short one that would be easy to memorize. It was a comedic scene from Midsummer Night’s Dream, where a lovelorn Helena pleads with a rude and unreciprocating Demetrius. My partner remarked he was too old for the scene but was game. On the other hand, I had no inhibitions, although I was more than ten years older than him. I learned my lines from a YouTube video, which was pretty good, but someone commented, “WTF?” People are mean, I thought. We did a few Zoom rehearsals and an hour-long rehearsal before class. As my confidence in the lines grew, I lost my inhibitions. I was running around wildly like the love-lorn Helena. I understood why acting can be addictive. We high-fived each other, and class began.
We went first and got the undivided attention of our teacher for over an hour. We first performed our scene for the class; I chased Demetrius across the room, making the class chuckle. I even remembered my lines (the scene was much longer than I thought). But our teacher was not impressed and got up from his chair meaning business. He first asked us what physical condition Demetrius and Helena would be in since, according to the scene, they had been running for three days. Plus, Demetrius was still trying to escape Helena, so he should be panting and “crawling.” I should be crawling behind him too, but I was given an adjustment because of my knee injury; I could enter the scene’s edge by pretending to hold on to a tree and then lean against the wall like it was a rock in the woods.
Although we knew that Demetrius, eager to get rid of Helena, threatens to harm her, we acted the scene like a taunt, while our teacher treated it as an attempted rape scene. This involved getting my consent to have my scene partner take my hand and run his fingers provocatively up my shoulder. The scene was something called a “180 degree” because Helena appears to fear Dmetrius’s advances but then frustrates him by smiling and saying she believes in his virtue and loves him even more for it. We redid this scene many times because I started smiling too early; it had to be right after the audience believed I was scared. Another technique used in this scene was a clowning technique. When Helena flummoxes him with her response, he first looks at the audience expressionlessly and then mirrors the audience’s reaction. This is like how children react after they fall; they decide to cry or not, depending on the responses of the adults around them. Our teacher said Shakespeare hid comedic effects even in the most serious scenes, so understanding these nuances was important. He added that learning film and TV scripts was a piece of cake once you had Shakespeare under your belt. I now understood the WTF comment for the YouTube scene I used to learn the scene; it was bland acting at best.
The class happened during an unexpectedly tough time in my life, and what the heck, Shakespeare might have saved my life. I was lying down and memorizing my lines aloud when everything started shaking around me. I tried to dismiss it as the effects of dehydration and proceeded to read my lines but could not mouth some of the words; they all came out jumbled. I decided to see a doctor who thought it was a pre-stroke, a transient ischemic attack (TIA), and further tests indicated that I needed medical attention. I would not have noticed if I had not been reading Shakespeare aloud. I usually never read anything aloud.
The class was sometimes tortuous, with the tedious word-by-word translations and my medical issues. I once showed up for class right after a brain MRI and received some not-so-good news while in class, but I handled it like a pro. Shakespeare would be proud. But I am glad I prevailed and that my scene partner prevailed. I cannot wait to go back for more. That is the power of Shakespeare: delayed and fulfilling gratification.
