I finished the Spring semester with my wonderful Second Year NYU Grad Acting students. The class is Techniques of Voice and Text and in it they learn to combine the voice work with the techniques that clarify the texts. They have learned where to breathe to support the ideas, how to find the spine of the thought, how to keep thoughts going (including how to do lists), how to lift out key words, and more. These tools will help them with any kind of texts including voice overs, commercial copy, as well as film, and television scripts.

For the last few weeks of the semester, we worked on applying these techniques to the texts of William Shakespeare. The basics of iambic pentameter, and scanning are covered but the new information is how to clarify the texts while acting. That’s the challenge! It doesn’t matter if the audience hears the words if they don’t understand the passion behind the words – why the character is saying what they are saying, why they are doing what they are doing. Having these basic tools and knowing how to use them frees the actor. And what is really interesting is how working on Shakespeare helps the actors with other kinds of texts. Once my students have graduated from the NYU program, they call or email to tell me how they are using what they learned working on Shakespeare for all kinds of scripts.

I am looking forward to the Fall semester when each student will be assigned a different monologue from the plays and we will work on combining the voice work and text work and Shakespeare tools while they are acting. I’ve seen/heard some remarkable work in the past during the Third Year and this group of actors is so talented that I expect to hear and see some amazing things. It will be exciting to go on the journey with them.

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