Richard III

Subject: Richard III, Acting and Looking for Richard

I have always enjoyed watching performances written by Shakespeare, but have a very hard time reading his words and getting my imagination to keep up. Richard III could be more difficult for me than others because of all the characters and twists. In reading the play for the first time, I was immediately confused, which I believe ruined the rest of the reading. I found my self reading scenes and acts over and over again to try to figure out what was going on. I was forced to take detailed notes and analyze each point of the play slowly. It made me feel very dyslexic.

Looking for Richard helped me to enjoy Shakespeare again and to lose the frustration I had from reading Shakespeare's words. Though Shakespeare may be difficult to read, I find myself learning the language as I watch a live performance. It is as though my ears adjust to the verses as the play deepens. An abnormal example to this is a play that I went to see while in Mexico over JanTerm. The play was a comedic play performed in Spanish. I am not bilingual in the least bit and at the beginning of the play I understood very little of the conversation. It was interesting that by the middle of the play, my "spanglish" began to work for me, and my ears had adapted to the language. Obviously Shakespeare is not writing in a different language completely, and likewise I did not learn Spanish from seeing one play, but I was able to adapt in a live performance where I might not have been able to do just reading.

Chapter four gives you good insight into what it takes to be an actor, and truly shows the dedication that goes into being an artists. Looking for Richard helped me to see this point even more so than the chapter. The chapter looks at many different approaches of acting, and Looking for Richard opened my eyes to what actors go through each time they take on a role. Watching the actors rehearse at the tables was very interesting. The actress that was playing the queen in the play really shocked me by her performance at the table. She really put emotion into everything she acted. I enjoy seeing what it takes to make a production come to life, and makes me interested to be a part of some production in the future.