Shakespeare Dallas, in cooperation with Shakespeare and Company from Lenox, Massachusetts, provides a weekend training intensive once a year in the spring. Twenty hours of intensive voice and text work during one weekend provides the performer with an extraordinary resource to improve performance. The 2007 Intsensive was March 23-25. The Weekend Intensives are designed to meet the needs of actors who seek an introduction to Shakespeare & Company's training methods, and an opportunity to re-awaken and revitalize their relationship to Shakespeare's text.
The Weekend Intensive Format:
- Friday evening is an introduction to Shakespeare & Company's aesthetic and an opportunity for the actors to shift gears and focus on their work through a series of exercises involving voice, body and memory work.
- Day two focuses on the actor's individual voice and experiences, which are incorporated into a monologue that the actor has prepared for the class.
- Sunday moves more vigorously through the voice and bodywork, with the actors reconnecting with Shakespeare's text, revisiting their monologues and exploring how the structure of the verse might influence character and performance.