Shakespeare on Toast | Playing with Sticks & Partners | Explore Shakespeare with Ben Crystal | 3mins @shakespeareontoast | Uploaded April 2021 | Updated October 2024, 1 hour ago.
These partner exercises encourage eye contact, and full body physical expression.
They can create a common non-verbal language among participants that is non-hierarchical, and can help a group of actors/students/folx quickly establish a collaborative ensemble.
This is a listening exercise. It aids proprioception, helps improve balance, focus, and can bring a lightness to a familiar speech or scene. The off-balance can tip you out of your comfort zone, physically & vocally.
***Note my stick drop at 1.06, where I say “that’ll happen”: I dropped the stick because I wasn’t listening to my partner, who offered to move in a different direction, and I was too busy narrating to listen to her silent offer.***
I play the sticks in solo (see the 3min film "Playing with Sticks & Speeches" youtu.be/FHUX0Icppu4), in pairs and trios and as many folx as are in the room. Love playing with these exercises with music, often to artists like Steve Reich, Max Richter, Radiohead and Björk. Something that you can lose yourself in.
The music isn’t for dancing to: it's just that you’re taking a stick for a walk while music is playing, allowing the mood of the music to ripple through you.
When adding in Shakespeare, the sticks offer opportunities to explore power dynamics, among other things - with care, push each other around! The exercise can help lighten a speech or a scene that feels heavy, or stuck: this simple exercise changed my practice and approach to playing with the Bard’s words.
*****
The basic exercise:
- Start physically neutral, feet hip-width apart
- Join together with your partner(s) sticks
- Keep a friendly eye contact throughout; if there are multiple partners, keep offering eye -contact even if it isn’t always returned
- Keep your heels and shoulders down; relax your jaw
- Don’t try to stop the stick from falling
- When it does fall, everyone in the group pause until the stick has been picked up, and then continue to play
- Play some music, throw in some Shakespeare: invite a partner to explore a dialogue, or to silently push or pull you around while you explore a monologue
Can you make this exercise work with 3 people? How about with 4, 5, or more?
*****
Always be mindful of your surroundings
*****
Keep your partners safe - if someone is walking backwards try to indicate they should change course non-verbally, if you can!
*****
Lineage
I first learnt this exercise from workshops with Theatre du Complicité, with Annabel Arden, & with Monika Pagneux, who learnt and taught it at Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris.
They told me that at Lecoq, you were allowed to walk the stick in your 2nd year of training, having spent the 1st year acquiring the neutral body - and that’s IF you’re invited back for the 2nd year.
Over the last 20 years, the exercise has been redeveloped in my own explorations, as well as in Shaxplorations with the director Rob Gander, with Passion in Practice, with the actor and movement director Jennifer Jackson, with The Shakespeare Ensemble, and in schools, theatre companies, and community & professional acting workshops around the world.
Together with Joe England and Helen Foan, in 2018-20 we explored adapting these tools for neuro-diverse and disabled students.
I've explored these exercises with companies that have since taken the exercises in their own directions, including members of the Shakespeare Theatre Association, and the theatre companies Seven Stages Shakespeare and The Rude Grooms.
*****
Filmed by David Crystal
Partner & Closed Captions c/o Hilary Crystal
Background play c/o Paws Crystal
@bencrystal
bencrystal.com
These partner exercises encourage eye contact, and full body physical expression.
They can create a common non-verbal language among participants that is non-hierarchical, and can help a group of actors/students/folx quickly establish a collaborative ensemble.
This is a listening exercise. It aids proprioception, helps improve balance, focus, and can bring a lightness to a familiar speech or scene. The off-balance can tip you out of your comfort zone, physically & vocally.
***Note my stick drop at 1.06, where I say “that’ll happen”: I dropped the stick because I wasn’t listening to my partner, who offered to move in a different direction, and I was too busy narrating to listen to her silent offer.***
I play the sticks in solo (see the 3min film "Playing with Sticks & Speeches" youtu.be/FHUX0Icppu4), in pairs and trios and as many folx as are in the room. Love playing with these exercises with music, often to artists like Steve Reich, Max Richter, Radiohead and Björk. Something that you can lose yourself in.
The music isn’t for dancing to: it's just that you’re taking a stick for a walk while music is playing, allowing the mood of the music to ripple through you.
When adding in Shakespeare, the sticks offer opportunities to explore power dynamics, among other things - with care, push each other around! The exercise can help lighten a speech or a scene that feels heavy, or stuck: this simple exercise changed my practice and approach to playing with the Bard’s words.
*****
The basic exercise:
- Start physically neutral, feet hip-width apart
- Join together with your partner(s) sticks
- Keep a friendly eye contact throughout; if there are multiple partners, keep offering eye -contact even if it isn’t always returned
- Keep your heels and shoulders down; relax your jaw
- Don’t try to stop the stick from falling
- When it does fall, everyone in the group pause until the stick has been picked up, and then continue to play
- Play some music, throw in some Shakespeare: invite a partner to explore a dialogue, or to silently push or pull you around while you explore a monologue
Can you make this exercise work with 3 people? How about with 4, 5, or more?
*****
Always be mindful of your surroundings
*****
Keep your partners safe - if someone is walking backwards try to indicate they should change course non-verbally, if you can!
*****
Lineage
I first learnt this exercise from workshops with Theatre du Complicité, with Annabel Arden, & with Monika Pagneux, who learnt and taught it at Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris.
They told me that at Lecoq, you were allowed to walk the stick in your 2nd year of training, having spent the 1st year acquiring the neutral body - and that’s IF you’re invited back for the 2nd year.
Over the last 20 years, the exercise has been redeveloped in my own explorations, as well as in Shaxplorations with the director Rob Gander, with Passion in Practice, with the actor and movement director Jennifer Jackson, with The Shakespeare Ensemble, and in schools, theatre companies, and community & professional acting workshops around the world.
Together with Joe England and Helen Foan, in 2018-20 we explored adapting these tools for neuro-diverse and disabled students.
I've explored these exercises with companies that have since taken the exercises in their own directions, including members of the Shakespeare Theatre Association, and the theatre companies Seven Stages Shakespeare and The Rude Grooms.
*****
Filmed by David Crystal
Partner & Closed Captions c/o Hilary Crystal
Background play c/o Paws Crystal
@bencrystal
bencrystal.com
