Description
AbstractThis paper proposes a practice-first pedagogical model for teaching Shakespeare in higher education actor training, responding to the persistent dominance of text-first approaches that prioritise literary analysis over embodied engagement. While such approaches have long shaped actor training and classroom practice, they can present barriers to accessibility, limiting students’ ability to encounter Shakespeare’s language as a living, performative medium. Drawing on practice-as-research, this paper introduces the Shakespeare Toolkit: a structured, scalable framework designed to reorient the actor’s first encounter with Shakespeare from interpretation to action.
Developed across three iterative research phases spanning Level 3, Level 5, and Level 7 cohorts, the Toolkit comprises twenty exercises organised into four progressive “Trays.” The model integrates principles from Stanislavsky’s “system”, Elizabethan acting practices, and First Folio technique, synthesising these into a coherent approach that foregrounds psycho-physical action as the primary site of learning. The paper begins by focusing on Tray One: The First Encounter, which operationalises practice-first learning through a series of exercises that prioritise doing over analysis. These include Circumstances Improvisation, which situates the actor within the given circumstances prior to textual engagement; Cue Script Performance, which reconstructs dialogic responsiveness through cue-based interaction; and Pushing and Pulling, which externalises inner action through simple physical impulses.
Through this progression, the practice-first encounter established in Tray One: The First Encounter is extended through Tray Two: Inner Life, Outer Action, where students engage directly with Shakespeare’s language as a site of action. Within this phase, complex theoretical frameworks - such as rhetorical structure, inner action, and Stanislavsky’s Laws of Speech - are translated into accessible, embodied tasks. In doing so, the Toolkit enables students to experience Shakespeare’s language not as an object of analysis, but as a dynamic process of thought in action, shaped through phrasing, pause, and the unfolding of intention in time.
The paper argues that this re-sequencing of learning - from action to text - enhances student engagement, confidence, and agency, while also facilitating a deeper and more integrated understanding of performance. Evidence from workshop implementation and participant feedback indicates increased willingness to take creative risks, improved responsiveness in performance, and a stronger sense of ownership over the learning process.
Positioning practice as both a mode of inquiry and a mode of teaching, this paper contributes to broader discussions of practice-led higher education by offering a transferable model for transforming complex disciplinary knowledge into meaningful learning experiences. While grounded in actor training, the principles underpinning the Toolkit - scaffolding through action, learning through doing, and the translation of theory into practice - have relevance across disciplines seeking to bridge the gap between knowledge and application. Ultimately, this paper advocates for a reconfiguration of Shakespeare pedagogy in which action precedes interpretation, and in which students encounter the text not as a problem to be solved, but as an experience to be lived.
| Period | 23 Jun 2026 |
|---|---|
| Event title | Solent Learning, Teaching and Research Conference |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Southampton, United KingdomShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | National |