Welcome to The Shakespeare Toolkit,

The Shakespeare Toolkit was designed by Dr Benjamin Archer to make actor training for Shakespeare more accessible. The Toolkit focuses on a practice-first, Character driven approach to performing Shakespeare. It facilitates textual discoveries through practice, allowing learners to develop their competencies for performing Shakespeare through perfomance rather than verbal reasoning and extensive round the table analysis.

The Shakespeare Toolkit consists of 20 Tools (exercises) designed be utilised as a complete training and/ or rehearsal methodology for performing Shakespeare, however, individual tools can be used in isolation as part of alternative approaches to the text.

Using The Toolkit
The toolkit is designed to develop learner competencies over time, initially, the facilitator of the toolkit will play a significant role in guiding the development of performance work, leading to independent tasks for learners.

The Toolkit is divided into four Trays, as shown below. For every tool there is an instructional video which will enable you to deliver the toolkit with your learners or actors. These videos provide instructions to learners and an example of the tool in practice and can be accessed by following the link provided below.

Tray One : The First Encounter
Tools:
1. Circumstances Improvisation
2. Cue Script Performance
3. Pushing and Pulling
4. Verse or Prose
5. Passionating
6. Logical and Psychological Pauses
7. Orders, Explanations and Questions
8. Heartfelt

Tray Two: Living the Text

Tools:
1. O Warm Up
2. Thought Lines
3. Punctuate The Thought
4. Therefore
5. Capital Gestures
6. Playing Parenthesis

Tray Three: The Final Flourish

Tools:
1. Mic Drop
2. You or Thee
3. Painting Pictures

Tray Four: Back to The Text

Tools:
1. Quickly
2. Action
3. Stage Directions