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Mountain Day
Tomorrow- Feb. 1
Contact Savannah Calvert at
calverse@brevard.edu for info.
Jan. 31, 2014
Workshop to remember
By Addison Dent
Contributing Writer
T his past weekend, Friday, Jan. 24
through Sunday, Jan. 26, the Brevard
College Theatre department welcomed the
world renowned director, acting teacher &
playwright, David Hammond, for a three-day
intensive Shakespeare workshop. This was a
tremendous opportunity to work with one of
the greatest artistic minds of today.
We were told to prepare two contrasting
Shakespeare monologues, read “Macbeth,”
and read his manuscript on scansion and
Shakespearean text work. Five participating
majors, Raquan Edwards, Joshua Runkels,
Marrisa Burdette, Karen Bennet, and myself
had a previous course, Audition Technique, in
which we were introduced to the Hammond
method of working with Shakespeare.
It is rigorous and precise and yields a
great deal of truth from the text that cannot
be gleaned otherwise. To have the first
hand experience of being lead through the
process by Hammond was invaluable! The
growth in our majors over the weekend was
unbelievable, which is a testament to the
power of the work.
The first day we met at 6:00pm in the
Morrison Playhouse, our black box theatre, we
arrived early and eagerly awaited the arrival
of David Hammond. We were all nerves
and reflecting over our memorization and
preparation for what would be a monumental
workout! He arrived and was all smiles and
welcoming, but we were intimidated by the
reputation that followed him into the black
box.
David Hammond has taught at the Juilliard
School, the American Conservatory Theater,
the Yale School of Drama where he became the
artistic director of the Play Makers Repertory
Company, New York University's Graduate
Acting Program at Tisch School of the Arts,
the American Repertory Theater/Moscow Art
Theater School, at Harvard University, and
recently at Guilford College.
David Hammond returned to Guilford to
teach, and will be teaching at Harvard in
the fall, followed by directing several of
Shakespeare’s plays in Uruguay that have
been translated into Spanish specifically for
his productions. His professional resume must
be as long as his near fifty page manuscript!
He walked to the front of the space next to
a white board and table and sat down calmly
in his chair, already having everyone on edge
with anticipation. His first words, “Okay.
Who’s first?” We were stunned, all I could do
was smile, a deer in the headlights and then
he said, “You. Your smiling, come up here.”
Me? My legs moved on their own and I was
already shaking his hand before I knew it.
From then on we cruised through our
monologues, with the careful and intensive
direction of David Hammond. It was such
a rush to be lead in such a way that you
continually reveal the truth of the text and
your character. We had to fight off the,
“Muscle memory of practicing lines aloud
in our room,” and that was quite difficult. We
had to practice, “Picking up the new tool and
using it, rather than go back to the old tools
that don’t work.”
We finished the night around 10 p.m. after
listening to Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Billy
Holiday and Paul Robeson. He explained
how these musical artists hold a listeners
attention by the way they communicate the
imagery of the piece.
The following day he guided us through the
history and legacy of Elizabethan rhetoric and
how it informs the Shakespearean text and
us as actors. We learned that when digging
through a play in search of facts about the
world of the play and our character, we
must know the process of which the text and
material was originally conceived, and in that
lies great truth of the character and story.
His method of scansion had us feeling like
Sherlock Holmes, but we came to realize
that if you spend the time, and go through
the play examining the imagery and iambic
pentameter that is the framework of the text
the truth you uncover about the character
and the world of the play is so incredibly
informative. It was an epiphany. We all came
to love Shakespeare in a way we were not
taught in grade school.
We were all scanning lines of Corinthians,
Sonnets, and the beginnings of “Macbeth,” all
hesitantly offering up ways in which to scan
the lambic Pentameter, and how to image the
piece. We were wiped as he asked to have our
I Hannah Leonard, David Hammond, and Addison Dent |
Ljn
monologues ready for the last day. He inspired
us with previous stories of famous actors and
actresses he has worked with and how they
found truth in the text by, “Scanning first and
asking why later.”
The next day we scanned the last bit of a
speech we began the previous day from Lady
Macbeth. After the lunch break we tore into
the monologues again and we all wore eager
smiles on the edge of our seats.
The improvement was incredible! The
Coordinator of the Theatre Studies Department
at Brevard College, Brandon Smith, had this
to say after David left. “He said more than
once how impressed he was with the students
and the fact that they were being trained in the
right way, how they had a great understanding
of text work, and how he could tell they
were working their butts off He was very
impressed.”
David Hammond, as he was making his
good byes at the end of the crazy, jam-
packed weekend thanked us, “This was very
gratifying...! had a very good time, thank
you.” We were humbled and so grateful to be
directed by such a brilliant director. We left
with extremely high spirits and eager for the
next great challenge!
The experience to work with David
Hammond is one that has marked our
undergraduate careers as Theatre Majors
at Brevard College. More importantly we
have been given incredibly powerful tools
as actors: tools that will lead us to stronger
dramatic truths on stage or in film, tools that
allow our art to be so much more.
The work this past weekend with David made
us stronger actors and more conscientious
young professionals. We know how to do
the work and we know how to do the work
in such a way that will clearly and powerfully
communicate the grand stories we become a
part of It was a brilliant weekend—one we
will never forget.