Shakespeare & Company to Hold Chicago Actor Training Intensive This Month

Shakespeare & Company's Center for Actor Training will hold a Weekend Intensive Friday, March 31 through Sunday, April 2 in Chicago, Ill.

Designed to meet the needs of professional actors and theater students seeking an introduction to Shakespeare & Company's training methods, as well as alumni who wish to refresh and reconnect with the work, the intensive will be led by center for Actor Training Faculty Charls Hall (he/him) and Gwendolyn Schwinke (she/her).

Shakespeare & Company's Center for Actor Training's Weekend Intensives integrate voice, movement, and monologue work, beginning with an introduction to Shakespeare & Company's aesthetic and a series of exercises involving voice, body, and memory work. The workshop then moves on to individual coaching for each participant, using the voicework and the actor's personal experiences to enhance their exploration of Shakespeare's text and language.

The Chicago Weekend Intensive's schedule is Friday, 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. - the cost is $385. Actors who have completed the Center for Actor Training's Month-long Intensive, Summer Shakespeare Intensive (formerly the Summer Training Institute), or conservatory programs are eligible for a 15% tuition discount; members of acting unions and the Shakespeare Theatre Association receive a 10% discount.

To apply, visit shakespeare.org, or call (413) 637-1199, ext. 114.

About the Center for Actor Training

Shakespeare & Company's curriculum is internationally recognized as a deeply effective training experience for actors who aspire to bring their talent, intuition, and spirit to a higher level. Through the Center for Actor Training, actors, directors, writers, and teachers from all over the world come to work with the Company's faculty to train their voices and their bodies with a daily regimen of demanding classes, and to delve deeply into their own imaginations, intellects, and emotional lives. To bring a Weekend Intensive to your city, theater company, or university, contact us.

Faculty Bios

Charls Sedgwick Hall (he/him) is an actor, movement teacher, and director whose acting credits include performances in Love's Labour's Lost, Mother Courage and Her Children, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged, Revised), Romeo and Juliet, A Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night's Dream with Shakespeare & Company; The Color Purple (The Musical) Los Angeles Ovations Award winning production, The Next Fairytale, The Escape Artist's Children, and Follow with Celebration Theatre; Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing with Southern California Shakespeare Festival; Uncle Vanya, As You Like It, The Vigil with RAAP Theater Company; A Christmas Carol, The Little Foxes, Cymbeline, Cyrano, with A Noise Within; Angels of Lemnos, David and Goliath in America, Hitler's Head, The Lady's Not For Burning with The Road Theatre Company; Tartuffe and Arms and The Man with The Classical Theatre Company; Twelfth Night and Saint Joan with The Royston Theater Company; as well as productions of Faith and The Good Thing, Our Country's Good, Three Sisters, Death Unit, Measure For Measure, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Firebugs. The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, and Exit The King. Directing credits include Other World Lover and Afrocentricities with MPAACT, OUTStories, and The Red Train Café with Celebration Theatre. During his many years of performing and studying with Shakespeare & Company, Hall toured with the Education Program and trained as a movement teacher in the discipline of Trish Arnold. He has taught as a Guest Professor in Movement at the National Institute of Performing Arts in Sydney, Australia; a Guest Professor in Movement and a Guest Artist performing in Angels of Lemnos at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, and held the position of Director of Training/Movement Instructor with Two Pence Theatre Company. A member of the Actors' Equity Association, Hall holds an MFA from the NYU-School of the Performing Arts Graduate Acting Program and teaches and continues to study other Movement disciplines, as well as Shakespeare's Text, Rhetoric, and Sonnets.

Gwendolyn Schwinke (she/her) has served as a voice and text coach at Shakespeare & Company for The Merry Wives of Windsor, Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Or, Ugly Lies the Bone, The Comedy of Errors, Hamlet, The Unexpected Man and Shakespeare and the Language that Shaped a World, and created and directed Worse than Wolves for Henry VI. She is Resident Vocal Coach for PlayMakers Repertory Company and teaches voice in the MFA program at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Gwendolyn has worked as a vocal coach for other professional companies including Oxford Shakespeare Company (MS), Atlantic Stage (SC), Cheap Theatre, and Frank Theatre in Minneapolis, and for multiple university productions. Professional acting credits include Gertrude in Hamlet, Mistress Quickly in The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Nurse in Romeo and Juliet, Adam in As You Like It, Desdemona in Carlyle Brown's The Masks of Othello, Margie in Good People, Amanda in The Glass Menagerie, Jesse in 'night Mother, and numerous other roles. She holds an MFA from Illinois State University, is a Designated Linklater Voice Teacher, a Certified Feldenkrais Movement Teacher, a Certified Teacher of the Colaianni Approach to Speech and Accents, and a member of Actor's Equity.

Photo credit: Christina Lane.

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