Description
Verse Drama
Actors are sometimes frightened of verse. Its challenges can be considerable, but its pleasures are extreme. We’ll explore how verse can serve you in the quest for truth and simplicity.
Some suggestions: Greek drama in translation; Shakespeare of course (not prose, please); Marlowe; Jonson; Dryden… I hope we’ll also have a chance to work on more modern writers who sometimes use verse: Mike Bartlett? Tony Harrison? T S Eliot? Caryl Churchill?
We have time to see six pieces. Please learn them if you can. Observers permitted.
Samuel West has played Hamlet, Richard II and Malvolio for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Jeffrey Skilling in Enron in the West End and the voice of Pongo in Disney’s 101 Dalmations II. On screen he’s been in Slow Horses, Small Axe, W1A, The Crown and the films Suffragette, Darkest Hour, Van Helsing, Notting Hill and Howards End. He has played Siegfried Farnon in seven series of the new TV adaptation of All Creatures Great and Small.
As a narrator, Sam has appeared with all the major British orchestras and at the Last Night of the Proms. He has directed thirteen plays and two operas. Sam is an Associate Artist of the RSC and a trustee of the Campaign for the Arts. In his spare time he grows chillies and watches birds. A second series of his documentary with Adrian Edmondson Sam & Ade Go Birding has just been shown on 5.
