Instant Shakespeare : a proven technique for actors, directors, and teachers /

For more than two decades, gifted teacher and director Fantasia has run successful, intensive training workshops. These workshops provide the material for this book, in which the director endeavors to transfer into print insights and "proven" techniques that he has masterfully conveyed in person. In broad terms, the volume delivers "self-help Shakespeare" or, as Fantasia prefers to describe it, "an old-fashioned 'grammar'"--a handbook for learning. He effectively employs playful terminology--e.g., text analysis "games" with such names as "Dead Sea Scrolls" and "frog overlays"--to disarm readers' apprehensions about contending with Shakespeare. He supplies engaging exercises to help demystify challenging rhetoric. Pedagogical tactics aim to empower readers-as-actors with tools "to get under the surface of the verse/line/scene, under the skin of the character," to discover and "experience" Shakespeare. According to Fantasia, the methods he outlines here deliver instant rewards, not because absorbing Shakespeare is a facile enterprise but "because anyone can do the basic work without resorting to scholarly research or years of drama training." Fantasia's approach and book will prove accessible to novices without much background in Shakespeare and refreshing for veterans who enjoy viewing familiar matter from a novel perspective. Highly recommended at all levels. P. D. Nelsen Marlboro College