The Groundling couldn’t let today go by without wishing William Shakespeare a happy 444th 445th. There are celebrations this weekend in Stratford-on-Avon and at the Folger Library in Washington DC and elsewhere, when there will undoubtedly be a rush of tourists eager to engage in further bardolatry. In my own modest way I intend raising
Continue reading ...A colleague urged me to see this trailer for the new Batman movie The Dark Knight. It must have been shot and released before Heath Ledger’s death last week, and it’s hard to watch it without thinking of the tragic loss. What emerges here is however, an eerie focus on his character, the Joker, who
Continue reading ...Image via Wikipedia I suppose every profession has its jargon, its arcane rituals which can look and sound absurd to outsiders, and which even initiates can find complex if not downright puzzling. When it comes to acting, many have struggled to give expression to the nature of the artform; what it is, how it happens
Continue reading ...Occasionally a gem sparkles amongst the tailings of most journalism on the theatre. Such a piece was Kathleen Noonan’s All the World’s a Stage (Brisbane’s The Courier Mail 24-25 November). It was a very personal take on the power of theatre to move, shake, or soothe like ‘a warm cup of cocoa’ if that’s your
Continue reading ...If there were $$s for every time this note were given in rehearsal, there’d be a pot o’ cash worth fighting for. Not being heard can relate to so many problems: insecurity over lines and their meaning, a lack of self-confidence, through to poor technique … breath support and sloppy articulation being two of the
Continue reading ...I was asked by some students recently how, or whether I exercised my own imagination. We had been talking about the ‘most important muscle’, and about keeping it limber. This conversation must have stuck with at least one of the class members, who emailed me a week back wanting to know how to keep working
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