ACADEMY 2025: THE DIVE IN, A Midsummer Night's Dream
Kiki & David Gindler Performing Arts Center
6:00 - 9:30pm
$450 for 6 Weeks
This Academy Class is designed for professional actors at every stage of their career, from those just starting out to seasoned performers looking to refine their craft.
How well do you really know this play? Through deep textual analysis, set against knowledge of Shakespeare’s times and what his audience would have understood, we will dig and dive and grapple, aiming at a better understanding of Shakespeare’s meaning. In the long established Antaean tradition, we will read the play together, an act a week, taking any parts we choose. Occasionally, we might stage a scene to clarify (he did intend the plays for performance!), but the intention is to gain a new understanding of Shakespeare’s text through table work, readying us all for a production. In the final class, we will read the whole play through, alternating roles.
“It is idle to embark upon dramatic interpretation of a play until one is sure what the characters are talking about, and (that) it is equally idle to attempt to explain the dialogue until one is sure what Shakespeare intended to write.”
(John Dover Wilson)
January 15, January 22, January 29, February 5, February 12, February 19
