Theatre Workshop Held by the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, UK
On the afternoon of October 25th, 2017 a theatre workshop was held by the Guildhall School of Music & Art, UK at a thrust theater in Changping Campus of the Central Academy of Drama (CAD). The speakers were Elliot Shrimpton, Dean of Academic Research Department (Theatre), and Tom Morrison, a full-time voice teacher.
The workshop focused on performer’s body, breathing and speaking. Before its beginning, Eliot asked performers of "King Lear" to walk around and relax their shoulders, then to recall their performance in the show last night as well as to talk about their own opinions. Later, he simply explained his understanding of the language in Shakespeare's performance, that is "although the script lines were written by Shakespeare, they belong to the actors (actress) if they are spoken by actors (actress).
Tom Morrison then invited 11 students from the audience to join the British actors in the workshop practice. First of all, he asked students to lie down, bend their knees and chest. And then they felt their own breath and tried to relax themselves. He told everyone to stand up and guided students to communicate with each other through eye contact, breathing and body language. Tom required non-British students to engage in physical contact with the British participants in the performance of "King Lear". The performers read their lines and the participants found a way to connect with the performers. Then, a British actress and an actor gave a training demonstration to all audience. They performed a plot that “Cordelia said ‘Noting’ to King Lear” in the first scene of King Lear. Tom asked them to perform that scene again and again, so that they could find a better way to perform naturally and fluently. Elliot told the participants: "Don’t be nervous when talking about Shakespeare. It may be a happy day. Even the drama you performed is a comedy. Cordelie might feel happy instead of disturbed when she said ‘noting’ to her father. She might think that there will be a good result as if her father would buy her gifts."
In order to find a closely relationship between the two performers, Tom added a long stick, with performers’ hands holding against the stick and continuing their play of King Lear and Cordelia. As they read lines in the same scene repeatedly, two performers were getting better and better with speaker’s guidance. Elliot explained that was a practical training rather than a performance. We didn’t need audience's applause, because no matter whether it was good or bad our training today, our aim was to find out the shortcomings of yesterday's performance through demonstrator's training performance. He asked the participants and performers to set up each group of two and use a stick to perform a plot with free gestures and lines.
After nearly two hours of training practice, Elliot and Tom's workshop ended in audience’s warm applause. Their understanding of Shakespeare play and drama professionalism led us to explore the best emotional state for performing Shakespeare's drama. The workshop is beneficial to everyone.