Hardy Koenig, NDSU assistant professor of theatre arts, recently returned from a monthlong intensive hosted by Shakespeare and Company in Lenox, Mass.
Koenig was with actors, directors, writers and teachers from all over the world working with the company’s faculty to train their voices and bodies with a daily regimen of demanding classes and to delve deeply into their own imaginations, intellects and emotional beliefs. Participants study text analysis, voice, movement, Elizabethan dance, Alexander Technique, stage fight and exploration of the actor/audience relationship. Koenig incorporates this knowledge into the NDSU production of Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labour’s Lost” for the 2013-14 theatre season.
“The training at Shakespeare and Company was intense to say the least,” said Koenig. “The classes lasted all day and consisted of acting, voice, movement, clown, stage combat, dance and many other things like sound and movement, classes on Shakespeare’s world, staging, sonnets and text work.”
Founded in 1978, Shakespeare and Company performs Shakespeare’s plays, generating opportunities for collaboration between actors, directors and designers in addition to providing classical training and performance methods. More information can be found online at www.shakespeare.org.
NDSU is recognized as one of the nation's top 108 public and private universities by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education.