ACADEMY 2026: Shakespeare Monologues and Scenes: From Page to Stage
Kiki & David Gindler Performing Arts Center
Moderated by Elizabeth Swain
6:00-9:00pm
$525 for eight 3-hour sessions
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.
Shakespeare Monologues and Scenes: From Page to Stage
Shakespeare's text is a gift to the actor who knows how to find the offered clues to performance. We will explore the text's structure, its rhetorical devices, its rhythm and sound; we will learn to trust the text as the source of what we need to know to bring the text to vibrant stage life as we work on the performance of scenes and monologues. The goal is to give you a way of approaching any new piece of Shakespeare text.. or indeed any heightened text.
For the first class, please prepare a blank verse monologue (up to 18 lines), age appropriate and new to you. It doesn’t need to be fully memorized, but you should be thoroughly familiar with the text.
May 5, May 12, May 19, May 26, June 2, June 9, June 16, June 23
About Elizabeth Swain
Elizabeth Swain (elizabethswain.net) is a director, actor and teacher, and a member of ANTAEUS. Directing includes Two Noble Kinsmen and Romeo and Juliet for The Kingsmen Shakespeare Festival, The 6th Act’s An Evening of Betrayal, The Winter’s Tale, Hamlet, and Marston’s The Malcontent for ANTAEUS, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Macbeth for CSULB. She has directed staged readings for Classical Theatre Lab and ANTAEUS. As an actor she has worked on Broadway, Off Broadway and in many regional theaters, including The LA Women’s Shakespeare Company and ANTAEUS (The Curse of Oedipus, Macbeth, Top Girls). She has taught at Cal Arts, Barnard College and is Professor Emerita at Marymount Manhattan College. She was awarded an NEH Fellowship to study at Shakespeare’s Globe in London and holds a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center.
