Shakespeare in Focus: Study and Classroom Work

The Classical Acting programme at LAMDA fully immerses students into the thrilling and transformative era of British history when Shakespeare's plays were being written and performed on stages across London. Taught by actor and practitioner Oliver Birch, the course spans a hundred-year period and takes students from Shakespeare's early works into the Spanish Golden Age, French classical and Restoration periods.

We sat down with Ollie to look at the course, how young people can still relate to Shakespeare's characters, and why the playwright's works are still so important.

What have been some of your highlights teaching Shakespeare from the past year, both in the classroom and in performances? 

Well, I did scenes from Henry IV, Part 1 and 2 at the end of last term, which is very exciting because it contains the character of Falstaff, one of Shakespeare's most beloved comic characters. So that was a huge challenge for the actors. 

But what's really nice is that those two plays are about fathers and sons and surrogate fathers and sons. And sons betraying fathers and fathers betraying sons. It was a real pleasure to actually delve into Henry IV, Part 2 which isn't done very much and is a much more tricky play in terms of its structure and its density and performed much less often than Henry IV. That was a real highlight and the students attacked it with real commitment and joy and playfulness.

And how do you foster confidence in your students when they're approaching Shakespearean texts for the first time? 

I think one thing is to dispel the myths and expectations and preconceptions of Shakespeare. When I came to Shakespeare as a teenager, it was always about how can I make this sound like I'm just thinking and speaking it. Before I had any idea about the technical structure of Shakespeare, of what it means to speak verse as opposed to prose, it was always about that. 

So there's an element of needing to be able to understand that this stuff is there to be spoken. It's there to be lived. It's not there to be academically shown how clever it is. It's there to be connected with and understood universally by humans. 

So similar to what I said before, playing games and encouraging boldness in them. Because there is a lot of fear sometimes, particularly with American students. They come to Shakespeare and they put on an English accent because that's what they think we want. Because it's Shakespeare and it's so embedded in English culture. And we just want to completely dispel that. You bring yourself to it and you bring it to yourself. In both those ways, we need you to be able to intersect with it and embody it. So I use games and exercises without text and always from the place of relaxation, because if you're tense then you can't listen.

You've spoken about looking at Shakespeare's peers as well, is that sometimes a revelation to your students? Everybody knows Shakespeare, but then looking at these other writers of the time and what they were doing, is that refreshing?

Yeah, hugely refreshing. Because in some ways they're trickier, particularly the Jacobean era. In some ways the language is trickier, but in some ways the motivations of the characters are simpler than Shakespeare. So the characters could be much more direct in going for what they want. Whereas some Shakespeare characters have extreme latitude in the way that they think, in the way that they philosophise about the world. And that's very tricky to play sometimes. Whereas the Jacobean people are often after blood and they want it now. So yeah, that can be really illuminating for them.

Why do you think Shakespeare’s works are still such a huge source of inspiration for modern theatremakers and filmmakers? Why are they still so relevant? 

It feels like there's more Shakespeare than ever at the moment. For example, recently, the RSC did Hail to the Thief, which was a sort of gig theatre of Hamlet, but using the music of Radiohead. And this is happening more and more.

But what I would say is: Shakespeare is known. In the anglophone world, he is known by, almost everyone, whoever you are, whether it's the thin end of the wedge and going, "oh, to be or not to be," or, you know, a man wearing a ruff holding a skull. To the thick end of the wedge which is someone being able to recite the entire canon of Shakespeare.

So, the stories, some of the language, the history, even the image of Shakespeare is known in this country and anglophone countries in the West, perhaps globally. And if we know it, and we know its endless richness and the mercurial nature of it, it can be a forum. It can be a place where we can have a contemporary dialogue.

We can wield it, we can use it, we can impose on it the social and political issues that we want to. It's the only universal, I would argue that we have, other than the books of the major monotheistic religions, such as the Bible, the Koran, etc. And I think we need a forum like that for all of us, more than we've ever needed it before. Because Shakespeare writes characters that are completely rounded and psychologized. 

So, he writes Macbeth who loves his wife, but is capable of slaughtering children, who is completely morally conflicted about whether he should do something or not, and yet is overwhelmed with ambition. So, someone who is warts and all, is good and bad. There's a full range of morality.

So, onto that, we can project all of the contemporary conflicts within ourselves and within the modern world. It is a universal medium onto which we can actually talk about ourselves and the world. Nowhere else can we do that, I don't think.

I'm actually seeing, especially from young people online, a backlash towards characters that can’t be put into boxes. So, imperfect victims, for example, the idea that you can be a victim but also be capable of harming someone too. People don't like that. And so, like you said, these stories are so important for having characters like that and challenging people too.

I think that's absolutely right. Imperfect victims. We have to accept that good people do bad things and bad people do good things.  And it's increasingly difficult, in the current climate, where social media is so polarised. We are being asked and pushed to agree one way or the other. And how that manifests a little bit is people being reticent to embody someone doing a bad thing, a character doing a bad thing. 

So, in order to really examine the world, we have to get over that hump. We have to get over the idea that no one is perfect and no one is certain. People don’t want to relate to characters if they’re doing bad things and then hurting other people. Whereas actually the truth is, psychologically, because something bad has happened to you, it's going to affect your future actions in the world. You know, you can be a victim and a perpetrator at the same time. 

Recently the film Hamnet, which is about Shakespeare and the experience of writing Hamlet, has taken the world by storm. And then there are shows like Succession, with King Lear being a big inspiration. So Shakespeare is everywhere, as you said.

That's right. I remember I worked on a musical with a friend of mine a few years ago, and we had this brilliant M.D. called Joel Fran, and he was talking with us about plotting it. And his advice was just: you've got to think Shakespearean. You've got to think epically. There's so much structure in Shakespeare. The characters are so brilliantly pitted against each other morally, physically, romantically, etc, the drama is so exquisite. The juice you get from that is so brilliant.