Schauburg – Blogging Shakespeare & Theatre

From page to stage. This week’s workshop investigated specific acting techniques that help actors morph into specific characters. How do actors make their characters become alive, which information from the text can they translate into their character and how much freedom do they have to give them psychological depth?

To further the students understanding of movement and blocking, they creatively — and a s team — worked at becoming a bug. Once they had morphed into this bug, they were asked to move as a bug, as one entity. This actually proved to be harder than it sounds.

Another focus was put onto maintaining the energy in a specific scene and, in particular, on giving and receiving. The students lined up, facing each other and then were encouraged to act out specific emotional moments.

The most challenging scene was mother/father discovering their son was changed into a bug. How does the bug communicate with their parent? What are its needs? How does the parent react? Which emotions are displayed, and how? A challenge, which most mastered very well. What the students took away from this workshop was a deeper insight into emotional character development, trying it out yourself, rather than analysing it on the page.

This autumn, we’re Premiere Class for the stage adaptation of Kafka’s “Verwandlung” shown at the Schauburg, München.

Die Verwandlung

Taking teaching literature away from the normal classroom routine of the classical teacher-centred style, we chose a different path to explore a German classic.

The Schauburg’s programme is very exciting as it gives 26 senior students the unique chance to follow a professional theatre production from the beginnings to its opening night. We gain insight into the rehearsal process, the production process and thereby closely follow the team’s steps towards its opening night.

Last week we talked about how actors and the director approach a rehearsal, especially at the early beginning of a production. After having tried out some vocal and physical warmup activities, we had a peek into the various characters’ minds, trying with only one sentence per character to make them come alive in our rehearsal space. How would you feel like if you woke up one day as a gigantic bug? Imagine instagram and social media had been around in Kafka’s time…

We also got some insight into the costumes that the costumes designer envisions for this production. Some grotesque, some fairly peculiar — and some of us even were reminded of cartoon The Simpson. Well, clearly, this is going to be exciting to see what the costume designer has settled for. We can’t wait!