Preface: "The 1995-96 NEH/Folger Institute on Teaching Shakespeare Through
Performance"

During the 1995-96 academic year a group of sixteen college teachers
participated in the National Endowment for the Humanities Institute at the
Folger Library on "Shakespeare Examined Through Performance." Directors of the
institute were Alan Dessen (University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill) and
Audrey Stanley (University of California, Santa Cruz).  It was organized by
Lena Orlin (Executive Director of the Folger Institute at the Folger
Shakespeare Library and now Executive Director of the Shakespeare Association
of America).  The institute met at the Folger Library one weekend each month
for nine months.  The program was funded by the National Endowment for the
Humanities and by the Folger Institute.

These rigorously scheduled weekends gave participants the opportunity to meet
and work with a variety of distinguished visitors--teachers, scholars, actors,
directors, and dramaturgs.  The group also worked on individual and group
projects and attended at least one performance each session.

Records of this institute are now available from SHAKSPER.  (Hardy Cook will
issue instructions for retrieving them.)

A public version of the records is available at the following website:

http://www.tamut.edu/english/folgerhp/folgerhp.htm

The website offers direct access all the information posted on SHAKSPER, and a
few added extras.

On behalf of the institute participants and leaders, I  am pleased to invite
you to visit the website or download our files from SHAKESPER.  I am
maintaining the website, so please address any comments or suggestions you have
to me.

Tom Gandy
tom.gandy@tamut.edu.

MEMBERS OF THE 1995-96 NEH/FOLGER INSTITUTE:
 "SHAKESPEARE EXAMINED THROUGH PERFORMANCE"

Cezarija Abartis, Professor of English at St. Cloud State University, Minnesota
Eric Alexander G. Binnie, Associate Professor of Drama at Hendrix College,
Arkansas
Sheila T. Cavanagh, Associate Professor of English at Emory University, Georgia
Daniel L. Colvin, Professor of English at Western Illinois University
Kurt Daw, Associate Professor of Theater and Assistant to the President at
Kennesaw State University, Georgia
Thomas J. Gandy, Professor of English at East Texas State
University--Texarkana. (This institution became Texas A&M
University--Texarkana in September, 1996)
Miranda Johnson-Haddad, Assistant Professor of English at Howard
University, Washington, D.C.
Edward Isser, Assistant Professor of Theatre at College of the Holy Cross,
Massachusetts
Robert Lane, Assistant Professor of English at North Carolina State University
Julia Matthews, Assistant Professor of English at Wesleyan College,
Macon, Georgia. (Julia Matthews is now at Kennesaw State University,
Georgia)
Caroline McManus, Assistant Professor of English at California State
University, Los Angeles
Paul Nelsen, Professor of Theatre and Drama at Marlboro College, Vermont
Edward L. Rocklin, Professor of English at California State Polytechnic
University, Pomona
Ellen Summers, Associate Professor of English at Hiram College, Ohio
William Taylor, Associate Professor of English at Seattle University, Washington
Clare-Marie Wall, Associate Professor of English at California State
University, Fresno

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Introduction: "The 1995-96 NEH/Folger Institute on Teaching Shakespeare
Through Performance"

Shakespeare Examined Through Performance

Preface

"Shakespeare Examined Through Performance," a pedagogical institute directed by
Professors Alan C. Dessen and Audrey Stanley and held at the Folger Shakespeare
Library in 1995-96, was funded by the Education Division of the National
Endowment for the Humanities.  At this moment, it seems particularly important
to acknowledge the support without which this remarkable program would not have
been possible.

The Folger Institute, the division of the Folger Library which sponsors
advanced programs in the humanities, is in fact a collaborative venture between
the Library and thirty-three colleges and universities.  Each member
institution provides financial support, in the form of an annual fee, and
intellectual guidance, through its faculty representative to the Institute's
governing board.  These universities are largely located on the eastern
seaboard (with a concentration in the mid-Atlantic area), giving the Folger
Institute a strong regional base.  Funding from the National Endowment for the
Humanities makes programs developed by the Folger Institute available to a
larger, national audience of college and university professors.

The Folger Institute has a strong history of sponsoring the Endowment's
traditional six- and seven-week summer humanities institutes.  When in 1991 the
Folger approached the Endowment about organizing a program of comparable
intensity but with a radically different, academic-year, schedule, it was
N.E.H. officer Barbara Ashbrook who was sufficiently visionary to encourage us
to break out of the box of the usual format.  As always, she read the grant
proposal carefully in draft, offered advice that immeasurably improved it,
shepherded the completed proposal through the application process at the
Endowment, and then monitored the unfolding project.  But even these
contributions to the program, vital as they are, must not overshadow the
importance of that largeness of spirit with which--from the very first--she
approached a program that didn't fit the usual mold.

The result of the 1991 proposal was a 1992-93 institute on "Shakespeare and the
Languages of Performance," directed by Professor Lois Potter.  A group of
seventeen college teachers of Shakespeare travelled to Washington for one
intensive weekend each month during the nine-month academic year.  The format
was sufficiently successful and the outcome for pedagogical enterprise so
distinguished that the innovative schedule was adopted again in 1995-96, with
"Shakespeare Examined Through Performance."

So many ingredients are necessary for a program like this to flourish.
Directors Alan Dessen and Audrey Stanley were able to focus their vast learning
and experience on the particular issues and challenges of this project, and to
do so with an infectious zest, with conviction, and with a nurturing respect
for each participant-teacher.  The collective knowledge, commitment,
resourcefulness, and generosity of the members made for a groupdynamic of
unusual energy and accomplishment.  The administration and staff of the Folger
Library--especially the Reading Room staff, the Office of Special Events, the
guard staff, and the housekeeping and custodial staffs--provided support of
such skill and grace that it seemed invisible.

But without funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities none of
these talented individuals would have shared this occasion for advancing the
state of teaching at the college and university level.  The reach of these
N.E.H. funds is incalculable.  As was the case with "Shakespeare and the
Languages of Performance," each teacher who took part in the institute on
"Shakespeare Examined Through Performance" will practice new methods and share
new understandings with a full complement of American undergraduates. Each will
also spread the word with colleagues not only on the home campus but also at
professional conventions.  And, to further widen the circle, each has
contributed to the manual which follows.  The investment of the National
Endowment for the Humanities is small for such a return, but it is an
investment without which this form of national dialogue about college teaching
cannot go forward.

                                                      Lena Cowen Orlin
                                                      The Folger Institute

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Shakespeare Examined Through Performance

Introduction

If a good wine needs no bush and a good play needs no epilogue, then a good
Seminar or Institute needs no introduction.  However, some sense of how the
pedagogical materials that follow were generated may add to their usefulness
for a reader.

Those familiar with National Endowment for the Humanities seminars as a genre
usually think in terms of an intensive six-week session during the summer, but
this particular Institute, co-directed by Audrey Stanley and myself, has met
one weekend a month between September 1995 and May 1996 under the auspices of
the Folger Institute's Center for Shakespeare Studies at the Folger Shakespeare
Library.  The sixteen participants (seven women, nine men) represent widely
varied backgrounds and interests.  Five are from Theatre Departments and eleven
from English Departments (though several of the latter group have considerable
experience with performance); three are from schools in California and three
from schools in Georgia, with the rest from Arkansas, the District of Columbia,
Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Vermont, and
Washington.

The wide geographical spread suggests one potential liability of the
once-a-month scheduling, for our Friday-Saturday sessions were vulnerable to
weather delays for travelers, jet lag, and academic compression (wherein one's
teaching and other duties had somehow to be completed in a three-day week).
Nonetheless, distinct advantages emerged from such scheduling. This group was
not isolated long enough together to develop "cabin fever" or the normal
internal frictions associated with extended contact; each weekend, moreover,
was a special, distinct event--to be anticipated and then relished.  Most
important in pedagogical terms, teachers who encountered a new exercise or a
fresh way of approaching a scene or problem could try out their discovery
immediately (and could report back to the group at the next session).

The focus of the weekends varied considerably.  One through-line was a Friday
evening Shakespeare production seen by the entire group with each participant
then writing a brief response.  Those responses were duplicated Saturday
morning and were the basis for a discussion of the issues raised by that
production (and these discussions could be the liveliest moments of the month).
 Also recurring were various forms of on-your-feet scene work, for under Audrey
Stanley's direction individuals worked up soliloquies, paired off in scenes,
and worked through various exercises and staging problems so as to experience
directly the kinds of assignments that could be given to their students.  Other
sessions were devoted to the performance or pedagogical implications in various
historical and textual matters and to the ways scenes from productions
available on video-cassette could be used in the classroom.

A major role was also played by visitors.  During October and November
personnel from Washington's The Shakespeare Theatre talked to the group:
artistic director Michael Kahn; costume designer Marina Draghici; and actresses
Helen Carey and Caitlin O'Connell.  Lois Potter (U. of Delaware), who had
directed a previous NEH Institute at the Folger with a similar focus, brought
many rich materials, particularly her emphasis on writing about performance, to
the December meeting (and also arranged a very successful play reading of
Middleton's The Witch).  In January Cary Mazer (U. of Pennsylvania) led several
sessions on theatre history, with a special emphasis on notions of "character,"
and Michael Friedman (U. of Scranton) did some intensive work with scenes from
All's Well (a play we were to see the next month), ending with some
observations about how such performance-oriented teaching can be linked to
scholarly research and publication.  Members of the group themselves led the
various sessions in February, with those presentations the basis of the
material in this volume.  March was the province of the five ACTER actors
(Gareth Armstrong, Sarah Berger, Sam Dale, Joanna Foster, and Phillip Joseph)
who shared their techniques for getting students on their feet and doing
speeches, directed participants in their prepared scenes, and presented a
five-actor Macbeth. The final visitor in April was Michael Warren (U. of
California, Santa Cruz) who concentrated primarily upon the pedagogical value
of working with plays with multiple texts but also dealt with the links between
the academic and theatrical communities.

Such a summary does not do justice to the varied events and interactions in
which participants consistently found themselves teaching each other how to be
better teachers (indeed, by the end of the academic year this "director" was
learning more than he was imparting).  A great deal of discussion was then
devoted to what kind of legacy the group should leave.  Various long term
notions seemed attractive (in particular a web site so that the dialogue could
continue), but two ideas emerged for the present: 1) a pedagogical
"recipe-book" in which performance-linked exercises or assignments could be
collected and classified; and 2) a collection of projects that could represent
the many interests and skills of the group. The latter items vary widely, but
our hope is that teachers looking for ways to tackle Measure for Measure or
metre or Shakespeare's language (to cite only three of the topics) will find
here both stimulation and practical tips.

The true test of any pedagogical project is not the spirit of the group itself
(which has been and remains very high) but the pay-off for students,
colleagues, and others who will benefit from what we have learned and from the
items in this collection.  All of us have grown as teachers during these nine
months.  We hope that that gestation period will also produce something of
value for a wider community.

                                                        Alan Dessen
                                                        May 17, 1996

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On the Performance Syndrome

How can the work of the theater professional and the Shakespeare scholar
interact meaningfully in the classroom for both literature and theater students
and faculty? In co-teaching the NEH year-long Institute on "Shakespeare
Examined Through Performance" with Shakespearean scholar Alan Dessen I set
myself, as a theater professional, the task of putting 16 literature and
theater colleagues through the essence of physical voice and movement
work--basic for acting training but honed specifically to explore Shakespeare's
language and theater.

Using folio and quarto texts we closely examined the meaning, rhythm, and
imagery of the language. The basic structure of this work formed a large part
of the Summer preparation prior to the first gathering in September (see a copy
on the pages following this statement). We took Macbeth as our text since we
would be seeing this play twice during the year, and since it is a play often
taught in universities and high schools. Not only was this prior work  geared
for us to hit the ground running, but to assimilate personal investigation of
the text outside the harassment of the school year.   A second
acting/performance project for the second half of the year involved a scene for
two participants and was freely chosen from the Shakespeare canon. These scenes
were then available for the five British actors performing in ACTER's Macbeth
to look at and comment on.

Obviously a two to three year actor's training could not be given in what
amounted to a few days of work, but sufficient material could be presented to
give participants the means to explore the text as actors.  Certain revelations
of character and meaning and relationships emerge in rehearsal that are not
always apparent in reading the page. For students this direct physical
confrontation of the scene is often more meaningful than reading but has to be
well prepared for.  Literature students should not be involved in a false
acting training,  but the work studied at the Institute was to encourage
faculty to set students well chosen scenes to act that reveal the essence or
the controversies of the play under study, or to show video extracts of the
plays with a performance sensibility .

Other areas that we explored included the following: framing questions prior to
the visit of theater professionals--directors, designers, actors; attending
performances and going backstage: using the other arts--collages, music, etc.
to explore the world of the plays: analyzing structure through charts:
recreating offstage scenes that are described - such as the murder of Duncan:
presenting alternative interpretations; using a summary of the spectrum of
comedy (see following pages); and looking at ways Shakespeare scholars might
contribute to a local Shakespeare production (see following pages).

The amount of work was crammed  but assimilable simply because it was spread
out over nine months and work could continue between the weekend sessions.  A
wonderfully rich if nerve-wracking experience for me personally!  Only time
will reveal how profitable it will have been for others. A right conclusion
would be to assess this Institute after a further year of teaching.



                                                      Audrey Stanley
                                                      17 May 1996

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Some Compiled Notes on Comedy

Audrey Stanley

Basis - incongruities of ordinary life ( seen with/without kindliness)

Purpose - to arouse laughter/to correct

Method and Style -

1.  WIT
(smile)         verbal, critical, intellectual
                very rapid perception of relationships between unlike things
                aware of the follies of people
                separates self and sits in judgement on the rest
                uses words and ideas
                method = surprise
                a consciously entertaining person of ready speech
                        & lively' intelligence - solemn at heart
                wit seeks to correct in satire, sarcasm irony

Shaw:  "Mankind is on the stage - the wit in front of the curtain"

2. HUMOR
     (chuckle)  where sympathy is mixed with comedy
     (laugh)    arises from unusual temperament
        abnormal (in humor not deformity)
odd, bizarre (clown + reason)
in sympathy with object of laughter (Shakespeare)
includes all things -
seeing life itself as a pageant of the incongruous
we may condemn a character morally, intellectually
and yet rejoice in him or her
bound up with good nature and kindliness
laughing at our own minor misfortunes to merriment
chuckle at defects and shortcomings in all, including laughter
bond of fellowship

Meredith (1877): "On the idea of Comedy and uses of the comic spirit"
whenever people "wax out of proportion, overblown, affected, pretentious,
bombastical. hypocritical, pedantic, fantastically delicate" or are
"self-deceived or hoodwinked, given to run riot in idolatries, planning
short-sightedly, plotting dementedly; whenever they are at variance with
their professions, and violate the unwritten but perceptible laws binding
them in consideration one to another; whenever they offend sound reason,
fair justice; are false in humility or mined with conceit individually or
in the bulk; the Spirit overhead will look humanely malign and cast an
oblique light on them, followed by volleys of silvery laughter. That is the
Comic Spirit."

John Gassner,Masters of the Drama :  "Moliere never roared like Jonson
/Johnson?;  he simply laughed."

3. SATIRE
        seeks to amend with a sense of superiority and criticism
        by means of exaggeration (manners and morals)
                Ludovici - "Laughter is a barring of the teeth"

4.  SARCASM
     (grimace)  amend by inflicting pain (faults and foibles)
        by means of inversion
        Lampoon-bitter public attack

5.      IRONY
                where audience knows facts but characters don't
                when more is meant than the surface meaning - but not
                everyone present will understand

6.  FARCE
     (laugh)    outrageous absurdity of situation or character
        ludicrous and absurd unreal

7. BURLESQUE
        caricaturing plays, books, statesmen, actors,
                        and people whose style is familiar
        imitate or mimic the above in such a way as to make them
        laughable, ridiculous, grotesque, and generally absurd
        by exaggerating peculiarities
        by giving a ludicrous turn to what was meant seriously

c.f.  Parody, Travesty, Skit, Take-off

8.      SLAPSTICK
        (Belly  rough, knockabout farce
       laugh)

c.f. Henri Bergson, Laughter, for discussion of comedy to be found in
                1. situations, 2. words, 3. character
                p.s. Also add  4. visual

Walpole:  "Life is a comedy to the man who thinks and a tragedy to the man
who feels."

Ionesco:  "There are no alternatives; if man is not tragic, he is
ridiculous and painful, "comic" in fact, and by revealing his absurdity one
can achieve a sort of tragedy.  In fact I think that man must either be
unhappy (metaphysically unhappy) or stupid." (= absurdist theatre)

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SAA 1995 Annual Conference      Seminar - Living in the Gap

Audrey Stanley - Notes from the Front

Background

One of the primary reasons for setting up the Shakespeare Santa Cruz Festival
was to link imaginative (cutting-edge) Shakespeare scholarship with the putting
on of his plays. C. L. "Joe" Barber, a former President of the SAA and Dean of
Humanities and Arts at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) and
author (amongst other books) of Shakespeare's Festive Comedies, died in 1980
and the organization by town and gown to produce the Shakespeare festival was
in his honor.  Our first home brewed season in 1952 took advantage of the
presence of Michael Warren at USC who was working with Gary Taylor on The
Division of the Kingdoms: Shakespeare's Two Versions of King Lear  in which, as
you know, the thesis was argued that the Quarto and Folio represented two
separate versions of King Lear  and that most edited texts conflated the two
separate versions. As the director of King Lear and on the advice of Michael
Warren I chose to direct the shorter Folio version, complete, and including all
the stage directions. Michael evolved the role of Textual Consultant for the
Festival, a scholarly task which is constant and ongoing, while I organized a
scholarly conference involving the leading actors - Tony Church and Julian
Curry of the Royal Shakespeare Company and various scholars, including Homer
"Murph" Swander.

As part of the scholarly interaction I had four scholarly "assistants" to the
production.  One was Beth Goldring, who was also contributing a chapter to The
Division of the Kingdoms: and whose Ph.D. thesis was on King Lear (she knew
both Q and F versions by heart).  Officially she was the dramaturg and I took
the necessary precaution of discussing the play with her before hand to
discover that she and I had much the same vision of the play' - so she took on
some of the functions of an assistant director since we only had three weeks of
intermittent rehearsals (two weeks with Tony Church).  Lilian Wilds, a most
generous-hearted scholar, wanted to write an article on Tony Church's
interpretation of Lear, and assisted in any way she could - partly serving as a
sounding board for Church, who had acted Lear before but never using just the
Folio text.  Annette Drew-Bear came as a recent Ph.D. graduate in Literature
who was going to her first appointment and had been told she would have to
direct a Shakespeare play and sought to learn more about Shakespeare in
performance.  Both Wilds and Drew-Bear made a much needed contribution by
checking the actors' accuracy in speaking the text.  Lastly, a Ph.D. student in
Literature, Briana Newton, who wanted to learn more about putting on a play,
served as an assistant to the stage manager.  The following year I persuaded
Harry Berger (who argued against performance) to be the dramaturg for Macbeth.
He provided the unraveling of all the possible connotations of meaning and
direction of thought in Macbeth's soliloquies for Julian Curry, who returned to
the festival to play that role in 1983.

I will summarize the major interactions of scholarship and productions which we
have tried at Shakespeare Santa Cruz, with their spheres of influence and
inherent problems.

1.  Textual Consultant - Michael Warren since 1982.

Year round to the company.  This stipulation is important as it enables
scholarship to link with directors before casting and designing of the
production - in the formative time of a director's creative ideas.

Possible areas of influence:

a)  Text/script.
Advising on which edition for the director and/or the company to use. Theatre
companies generally use the cheapest or most easily available.  The director,
however, is likely to consult several editions, such as the Arden for the
notes.  Copies of Quarto and/or Folio text(s) made available to director.  To
actors?  to dramaturgs?  to voice coaches?

b)      Sending extracts from recent scholarly articles about the play to the
incoming directors.

c)  Having a discussion with the director, if possible before casting and
before designing.  This can fruitfully be a one-on-one situation.  At UCSC this
has also taken place through the auspices of the faculty, staff and students
Focused Research Activity (FRA)  in Shakespeare and Early Drama by means of a
reading of the F or Q text and a following larger discussion with director and
the readers.

d)  Sitting in at the very first meetings of a production in which the meaning
of the play is worked through by director, actors, and dramaturg, with reading
and discussion and/or modern paraphrasing, and clarifying meanings and
directions as appropriate.

e)  Initially all textual cuts were submitted by directors to the textual
consultant with the major premise that the text should be performed as complete
as possible.  This activity has been dropped and its function taken up by some
of the scholarly dramaturgs or consultants working with the individual play.

f)  Attending rehearsals and speaking to the director or better still sending
her/him notes. Being available for actors to elucidate textual matters only if
this is in complete agreement with the director.

g)  Supplying program notes on the Shakespeare plays for the season to
elucidate the background, controversies, modern connections of the plays, and
interactions of performing those particular plays together.

h)  Speaker about the plays to various organizations, including the venerable
Friday Shakespeare Club, and to local teachers.

2. Dramaturg and Text Coach
c.f. Ellen O'Brien for Hamlet, Henry V, Richard III ;  Mary Kay Gamel for the
Roman Season and Titus Andronicus, and also for Othello, Measure for Measure;
George Amis for Much Ado About Nothing;  Judy Dunbar for The Winter's Tale
(she was also production assistant for Richard II);  Margo Hendriks and Bruce
Avery for A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Taming of the Shrew; and Bruce Avery
with Sharon Bundy for All's Well That Ends Well. Since 1991 the Festival has a
professionally trained dramaturg, Catherine Sheehy, who teaches dramaturgy at
Yale and covers all three or four plays of the season.  Published work has
resulted from many of these associations - and perhaps more than I have
researched.

The title dramaturg needs clarification as to function. Some large professional
theatre companies employ (in Europe) up to four serving the functions of
literary editor, educational outreach, word meaning, clarifier of the script,
assistant to the director and, by delegation, to the actors in helping to
unravel difficulties of interpretation in rehearsals.  This was where the
festival (probably Ellen O'Brien) evolved the term Text Coach.  This latter is
the most delicate area of cooperation - and where purely Shakespeare scholarly
dramaturgs can most easily step on the creative prerogative of the individual
director, actors and even assistant directors. However, since professionally
trained dramaturgs may lack the depth of research knowledge of the Shakespeare
scholar for a particular play, there should be room for a scholar.  Often the
work of the Festival dramaturg starts with the arrival of the company but it
should, if possible, begin prior to this.

The work of the dramaturg or text coach covers similar areas (b - g) to that of
the textual consultant except the responsibility is to the one play and not to
all the plays in the festival. One additional area is a very sensitive issue -
that of changing (modernizing) words (such as "shive" to "slice" in Titus
Andronicus) and also that of cutting the text.

3. Scholarly Resource, Scholarly Guide, or Scholarly Advisor.
This title enables scholars to be part of the input into the interpretation of
a play without as much time obligation in the rehearsal period. (Literary
Editor should be avoided since it immediately suggests cutting, rewriting and
transposing of scenes or restructuring of the play). Norman 0. Brown was the
scholarly guide for Waiting for Godot in 1990.  He attended many of the
discussions but none of the rehearsals.

The titles above may help bring the presence of the scholar into the discussion
and rehearsal space and allow for variance of interpretation to be discussed.
But the shortness of rehearsal time and the possible interruption of the
rehearsal flow often makes the written form of comment by advisor to the
director advisable in the form of notes and questions, with brief extracts from
pertinent articles and comments.

4. Voice Coaches/Consultants/Directors
Professional voice training and experience with actors is a prerequisite. Here
is an area where working closely with actors on the speaking of the verse form
or the prose text can reveal new interpretative approaches to the acting of the
role and ultimately to the meaning of the production. The danger lies in the
perception by the director and/or actors that they are being given
line-readings - particularly in relation to scansion of the lines.  Here
Touchstone's great phrase "what if..." comes in very usefully, or "how about
trying out an emphasis on..."      rather than the dramaturg/scholarly
advisor/voice director speaking her or his perceived scansion of the line.
Again the close liaison with the director is very important. But I defer to
Ellen O'Brien's expertise in this area.

Where does this leave the scholar with a distinctive interpretative
approach?  Marxist, feminist, political, psychological, anthropological,
historical, etc.'
Nowhere?
Suggestion:
If you are interested to see a  production follow certain interpretative lines
(and many directors will feel such an approach is too restrictive, but others
might welcome a strong through-line approach) write to the prospective director
of the play and offer your services freely with this approach enclosing a brief
look at parts of the particular Shakespeare play in the light of this
interpretation and a statement (which should be true) that you are writing
further on this topic and should like to write up a production exploring such
an interpretation.

Other areas of influence:

1. Conferences to discuss the plays in performance.
At UCSC we have found it useful to bring in outside scholars (specializing in
that particular play) to give a perspective paper (if possible after seeing the
production), and afterwards combine with the director and some actors to
discuss aspects of the production.  Timing is very important as ideas presented
can influence the actors, and revivify a long-running production or deepen the
interpretation before it has become too set.

2. Institutes or Research Groups.
Perhaps one of the most long lasting in this country has been the Shakespeare
Institute at Ashland for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Founded by the
notable Stanford scholar Margery Bailey it has flourished under the direction
of Homer Swander and others. In the past it has operated mainly as a host for
serious Shakespearean study groups to visit the festival and listen to the
directors and/or actors talk about the productions while interaction with the
festival during planning and rehearsal has been minimal.  But with the change
to a year round season and the appointment of actor Barry Kraft as the
dramaturg and with the institute a much more permanent structure with the
College in Ashland this may have changed.

Here at UCSC we have created the Focused Research Activity Group on Shakespeare
and Early Drama which acts as a liaison between the festival and UCSC
Shakespeare scholars.  It can function as a scholarly lab for the festival
directors - and has done so with readings, discussions, invited speakers,
research topics by faculty, staff and graduate students under Michael Warren as
its initial director 1986-93, Audrey Stanley 1993-94, and Mary Kay Gamel
1994-95. Shakespeare scholars who are interested to have some connection with
their area professional theatre or Shakespeare festival might consider setting
up a similar organization.

3. Teachers Groups.
Many theatres or festivals have educational outreach programs which focus on
college or high school students and teachers - again as a Shakespeare scholar
you might be able to make contact with the theatre company via this association
- and I am thinking of the very lively organization that has existed with the
Mark Tapor Forum theatre in Los Angeles.  Many such groups have school visits
by actors from  the company, or using younger actors or like Shakespeare Santa
Cruz using the University theatre students create a traveling (shortened)
version of one of the Shakespeare plays that will be performed later by the
Festival.

A. Shakespearean Lectures.
Bringing in an expert on the play to speak to your college/university and
invite the director to attend/participate.

What could the SAA organization do?'

1. Make greater connections with theatre directors, designers, and actors
particularly when they are about to produce a play. Their expenses would have
to be paid. This has been done but has been dropped.  The links could be both
in a major conference session as well as in a relevant seminar which should
precede the major session.  There should be a careful liaison with the scholar
leading the seminar who is working on the play and who could then have prior
access (influence) to the director's ideas.

2.  SAA Conference should attend a Shakespeare production and go into voluntary
small group discussion sessions afterwards, putting the comments made into a
computer.  After omitting duplicate points, this compilation to be given to the
director who should later have an answering session.  There should be a prior
meeting to discuss the list by the director and a scholar who will chair the
session.

3.  What other suggestions do the Seminar members have?  Could the SAA set up
an endowment fund to encourage greater interactions at the annual conference?
What form might these take?

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A Partial Bibliography of Aspects of Theatre

Audrey Stanley

Some books on the craft of DIRECTING:

Dean/Carra, The Fundamentals of Play Directing, Holt, Rinehard, and
Winston, 1980.
Francis Hodge, Play Directing - Analysis, Communication, and Style,
Prentice-Hall,      Inc., 1982.
Robert L. Benedetti, The Director At Work, Prentice Hall Inc., 1985.
David Grote, Script Analysis - Reading and Understanding the Playscript for
Production, Wadsworth Inc., 1985.
Amy S. Green, The Revisionist Stage - American Directors Reinvent the
Classics,         Cambridge University Press, 1994.


Books I have found useful in looking at the HISTORY, THEORY, and ART of theatre:

The "Revels" History of Drama in English, Vol. III 1576-1613, Barroll,
Legatt,  Hosley, Kernan, Methuen & Co., 1975.
Aristotle On Poetry and Style, trans G.M.A. Grube, Bobbs-Merrill, 1978.
F.M. Cornford, The Origin of Attic Comedy, ed. and intro T.H. Gaster,
Anchor,   1961.
T.H. Gaster, Thespis, Anchor, 1961.
Michel Saint-Denis, Theatre, the rediscovery of style, NY, Theatre Arts
Books, 1963.
Michel Saint-Denis, Training for the Theatre: premises and promises, NY,
Theatre Arts   Books, 1982.
Peter Brook, The Empty Space, Penquin, 1968.
        The Shifting Point, Methuen, 1988.
        The Open Door: thoughts on acting, 1993, NY, Pantheon Bks, 1993.
Konstantin Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, trans Hapgood, NY, T.A.B. 1963.
        Building a Character, tr. Hapgood, NY, T.A.B. 1949.
        Creating a Role, tr. Hapgood, NY, T.A.B. 1961.
Jerzy Grotowski, Towards a Poor Theatre, 1968.
        Zen and the Art of Archery.
H.D.F. Kitto, Form and Meaning in Drama, UP, 1960.
Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double, tr. Richards, NY, Grove Press, 1958.
Susanne Langer, Feeling and Form:  A Theory of art., NY, Scribner, 1953.

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Participants

Cezarija Abartis, Professor of English at St.Cloud State University, Minnesota

Eric Alexander G. Binnie, Associate Professor of Drama at Hendrix College,
Arkansas

Sheila T. Cavanagh, Associate Professor of English at Emory University, Georgia

Daniel L. Colvin, Professor of English at Western Illinois University

Kurt Daw, Associate Professor of Theater and Assistant to the President at
Kennesaw State College, Georgia

Thomas J. Gandy, Professor of English at East Texas State University,
Texarkana (This institution will be Texas A&M University-Texarkana
beginning in September, 1996.)

Miranda Johnson-Haddad, Assistant Professor of English at Howard
University, Washington, D.C.

Edward Isser, Assistant Professor of Theatre at College of the Holy Cross,
Massachusetts

Robert Lane, Assistant Professor of English at North Carolina State University

Julia Matthews, Assistant Professor of English at Wesleyan College, Macon,
Georgia

Caroline McManus, Assistant Professor of English at California State
University, Los Angeles

Paul Nelsen, Professor of Theatre and Drama  at Marlboro College, Vermont

Edward L. Rocklin, Professor Of English at California State Polytechnic
University, Pomona

Ellen Summers, Professor of Theatre and Drama at Hiram College, Ohio

William Taylor, Associate Professor of English at Seattle University, Washington

Clare-Marie Wall, Associate Professor of English at California State
University, Fresno