Double Shakespeares: Emotional-Realist Acting and Contemporary Performance

By Cary M Mazer and Cary M. Mazer

Book Overview

Double Shakespeares examines contemporary performances of Shakespeare plays that employ the "emotional realist" traditions of acting that were codified by Stanislavski over a century ago. These performances recognize the inescapable doubleness of realism: that the actor may aspire to be the character but can never fully do so. This doubleness troubled the late-nineteenth-century actors and theorists who first formulated realist modes of acting; and it equally troubles theorists and theatre practitioners today. The book first looks at contemporary performances that foreground the doubleness of the actor's body, particularly through cross-dressing. It then examines narratives of Shakespearean rehearsal--both fictional representations of rehearsal in film and video, and eye-witness narratives of actual rehearsals--and how they show us the process by which the actor does or does not "become" the character. And, finally, it looks at modern performances that "frame" Shakespeare's play as a play-within-a-play, showing the audience both the character in the Shakespeare play-within and the actor in the frame-play acting that character.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1611478456
• ISBN13: 9781611478457
• Release Date: March 2017
• Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.9" x 9.0"