A Reflection from the Classroom: Teaching Students to See from the Perspective of the Player

Authors

  • Marina Favila James Madison University

Keywords:

acting, drama, early modern

Abstract

This personal reflection looks at the benefits of using performance pedagogy in the Shakespeare classroom, both in terms of a general understanding of the period and a student's personal connection to the text. Though the essay acknowledges our profession's ongoing dialogue in this area, it mostly seeks to look at how a student may change once she becomes aware of how an actor must split his perspective when acting: that is to say, seeing through the eyes of the character, but also seeing how the audience responds to that character. The essay includes personal anecdotes about students who act in the classroom, respond to actors in the classroom, and write about that response in journal entries.

Author Biography

Marina Favila, James Madison University

Marina Favila is an English professor at James Madison University. She has published articles on Shakespeare, poetry, and film in various academic journals, including Modern Philology, Cahiers Elisabethains, Upstart Crow, Hellas, and (forthcoming) Texas Studies in Literature and Language. She has also directed dramatic readings of early modern plays for the American Shakespeare Center (Blackfriars Playhouse, Staunton, Virginia). Marina Favila has published on Shakespeare and film in Modern Philology, Hellas, Upstart Crow, and Cahiers Elisabethains

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Published

2015-07-12

Issue

Vol. 44 No. 1 (2015): Winter/Spring 2015

Section

Articles

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