Now that I\u2019m on the other side of fifty, I don\u2019t have the do-or-die ambition I once did, but I want to keep growing. I want to explore new horizons in pursuit of my full potential. This is why my antennae went up when I saw a particular notice on Facebook.<\/p>\n
I was mindlessly scrolling through Facebook when a local theater\u2019s image caught my eye. It wasn\u2019t until I\u2019d scrolled past it that the name Shakespeare registered. I scrolled back and had a better look at the headshot of a smiling woman who\u2019d be teaching a Shakespeare Scansion and Rhetoric class. Her bio disclosed an extensive acting career in theater, film, and television.<\/p>\n
\u201cShakespeare,\u201d I said to myself. \u201cIt bothers me that I know so little about the greatest playwright who ever lived.\u201d\nI have an abiding love of language. I love the magic of words, the alchemy of word arrangement, the perfect adjective that doesn\u2019t come close to the descriptive mark but hits it on the bullseye. I revel in pursuing a wide vocabulary in the interest of clear communication. The more words in one\u2019s verbal arsenal, the more possibilities one has at hand.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Claire-as-Evil-Queen-from-Cymbeline-750.jpg\")
<\/a>Claire Fullerton as Evil Queen from Cymbeline. Photo: William Feil<\/p><\/div>\n
I\u2019ll say this about my antennae: when it goes up, I pay attention. As I read and re-read the Shakespeare class notice, I kept thinking how little I knew of The Bard\u2019s use of language, never mind that I wasn\u2019t clear on the precise meaning of scansion. I looked up the definition of scansion and registered for the class.<\/p>\n
William Shakespeare literally gave the actor his intention to deliver his every written word. Most of his plays were written in iambic pentameter. Each ten-syllable line has 5 feet and two beats in every foot. Because Shakespeare wanted his lines to sing, each word is about its sound.<\/p>\n
Shakespeare, an actor himself, equated iambic pentameter with the beat of the human heart. There\u2019s a rhythm to iambic pentameter and an efficiency to the stressed and unstressed syllables meter. The study of which is called scansion. If an actor understands Shakespeare\u2019s scansion, they know how to speak the lines.<\/p>\n
At first, the scansion was complex. It seemed to me a lot like reading music, but once I was assigned a monologue, the merits of scansion came together. It\u2019s one thing to read from one of Shakespeare\u2019s plays and quite another to perform it.<\/p>\n
I worked on the Duchess of Gloucestershire\u2019s monologue from Henry VI, (2,) Act 2 scene 4. The first two lines are,<\/p>\n
\u201cCome you, my lord, to see my open shame?<\/em><\/p>\n Now thou dost penance too. Look how they gaze!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n I learned precisely where to stress the syllables in the iambic pentameter lines and came to understand that the placement of stressed words defines the delivery.<\/p>\n For weeks, I worked on the Duchess\u2019s 27-line speech. In it, she is being led barefoot in a white sheet through the streets of London; a woman second in importance to the queen now brought low because of the politics surrounding her husband, and it is to him that the Duchess delivers her speech.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re a powerhouse,\u201d my teacher told me. \u201cYou should be auditioning.\u201d<\/p>\n I hope that doesn\u2019t sound boastful. My intention is to share the facts about how I came to an important realization, and it has everything to do with avoiding labels and fearlessly exploring new horizons.<\/p>\n Encouraged by my teacher, I next enrolled in her 10-week Shakespeare gymnasium. In Shakespeare\u2019s day, gymnasium was the word used for school, and this course was precisely that.<\/p>\n Fourteen of us learned techniques for unlocking the keys to Shakespeare\u2019s text. There was much physicality in the class, which gave breath to the work. The in-person class was populated mainly by vibrant, working Los Angeles actors who consider the classics the foundation of their craft. It felt a bit over my head, but I dove in with total commitment.<\/p>\n I worked on the evil queen from one of Shakespeare\u2019s lesser-known plays, Cymbeline. After reading the entire play, it was easy to put my speech into context. Scanning the lines helped me understand the intended delivery. The physical exercises we learned in rehearsal gave me a good understanding of an actor\u2019s preparation.<\/p>\n I enrolled in another Shakespeare gymnasium and took a local, all-day workshop with a guest teacher who\u2019d come from Amherst College in Massachusetts. Next, I took an online Living Shakespeare 6-week class taught by a Santa Barbara, California teacher.<\/p>\n It is the start of 2024, and I\u2019m taking three acting classes: two centered on Shakespeare and an online, general scene study class from The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.<\/p>\n In early March, I auditioned for the 2024 season of the theater that put the notice on Facebook, and I was thrilled to receive a callback for one play and two callbacks for another. This August, I will enroll in that theater’s six-week Shakespeare Intensive, as well as, once again, their one-day Shakespeare rhetoric workshop by that visiting guest teacher from Amherst College. Currently, I am preparing to audition in mid-June for a part in the Tennessee Wiliams play, The Glass Menagerie, at another local theater.<\/p>\n These efforts are all in the name of keeping the embers burning of my new passion and knowing that, as I do, an actor’s path is cumulative and that braving auditions is a significant part of it.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve said I balk at being defined as one thing or another because that feels too limiting. But the important realization I came to is that calling myself an artist does not.<\/p>\n Artist is a very broad term, and to explore one\u2019s full potential, one must be fearless. Sometimes, that means as an artist, you should try on different hats.<\/p>\n Keeping the embers burning through new passion <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15006,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[186,187],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spring-summe-2024","category-spring-summer-2024-features"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14939"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15009,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14939\/revisions\/15009"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Claire Fullerton<\/a> is the multiple award-winning, traditionally published author of 4 novels and one novella. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines. She is a book reviewer for the New York Journal of Books, a ballet barre\/Pilates mat instructor, and an actor. She lives in Malibu, California.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"