English actor Peter Lindford (right) brings Shakespeare to students.
Despite the calm sunshine out the window, a wind was blowing in College Hall as an audience of about 40 students howled and hissed to create the setting of a British moor in an acting workshop Friday, Nov. 15, led by two London actors, here to perform in a five-actor production of William Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" at the Annenberg Center.
The audience of Philomathean Society members and Penn English as a Second Language students huffed and puffed as actors Biddy Wells and Peter Lindford delivered their lines, standing in adjacent windowsills, shouting above the rise and fall of the wind below, in just one of many interactive exercises meant to demonstrate the importance of acting with sensitivity to context.
Changing only the context, they then acted the same scene, the famous "Kill Claudio" scene from "Much Ado," while laying face to face on the floor, speaking in urgent whispers the same lines they had delivered in impassioned shouts a moment before.
The workshop was one of several the visiting actors participated in at Penn. This one was organized by "senior" (i.e. graduated) Philo members Heather Barlow and Linda Kalb in collaboration with Annenberg Center Director of Education Thea Diamond. The goal of Philo, Penn's literary society and the oldest student group on campus, is to extend learning beyond the classroom and to encourage the personal pursuit of knowledge.
The goal of the workshop was to communicate feelings and ideas that text and words do not make explicit, and to encourage, in Barlow's words, "expression despite language," especially for the ESL students, who formed about half of the workshop's participants.
The afternoon focused on love scenes from "Much Ado" as well as from Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night." At first the students seemed uncomfortable.
All changed as soon as Peter Lindford initiated a warm-up exercise of standing up, jumping up and down, and hollering "Hoo!" Mock gum chewing followed, and by then the place was all giggles. Reminiscent of grammar school gym class, next everybody chose a partner of equal height to do a series of lifting and stretching exercises with one partner balanced on the other's back.
Things really heated up when volunteers attempted several love scenes from both plays.
An appropriately shy Philomathean Beatrice, before being proposed to by Don Pedro, complained "I wanna sit down," and commenced to act the scene nervously sitting. Lindford approved, saying she communicated a real sense of discomfort about the proposal.
ESL student Su Jin, from Korea, had her own ideas of how to interpret Beatrice and Benedick's first confessions of love for each other, playing Beatrice herself, with Lindford as Benedick. The two strode slyly around the room speaking in whispers, and finished to the day's loudest applause. Afterwards Su Jin, laboring with her English, commented "The actors gave me confidence." Which seems to have been the theme of the day.
Wells and Lindford both encouraged volunteers to bring their own fresh interpretations to the scenes, and frequently praised students' originality. College sophomore Marianna Allen later remarked, "I like the way they [Wells and Lindford] instigated us to create different contexts for each of the different scenes."
The cross-cultural meeting of English actors, Philomathean Society members and ESL students ended with a cross-cultural snack - English tea and home-baked American cookies provided by Philo.
Return to Compass Features for December 3, 1996