Shakespeare & Company: When Action is Eloquence

Shakespeare & Company: When Action is Eloquence is the first comprehensive insight into this internationally acclaimed company founded in 1978 in Lenox, Massachusetts, by actor-director Tina Packer and voice pioneer Kristin Linklater, with the transformative power of Shakespeare’s language at its heart.

Why act Shakespeare? What’s his relevance in the twenty-first century? Compelling answers to these questions lie at the center of this highly accessible journey into Shakespeare & Company’s aesthetics and practice. Drawing on hitherto unpublished material – including notebooks, lectures, interviews, rehearsal diaries – and the Company’s newly collated archive, this book provides insight into a working theatre company and sheds light on the role Shakespeare plays in our modern world. It also details:

Shakespeare & Company’s founding and early history
Its aesthetic based on the Elizabethan theatre’s principles of the Art of Rhetoric; Structure of the Verse; Voice and Movement; Clown; Fight; and Actor/Audience Relationship
Vocational components of its Training Intensives
Practical pedagogy of its Education programs
Insights into its unique approaches to Performance
Impact and legacy of its three lifetime founding members: Dennis Krausnick (Director of Training), Kevin G. Coleman (Director of Education) and Tina Packer (founding artistic director).
Actors, directors, students, educators, scholars and theatre-lovers alike will find practical acting strategies, inspirational approaches to theatre making and lively insights into the sustaining of a unique and robust theatre company that has been thriving for over 40 years.