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Acting in Restoration Comedy Workshop in East Sussex

Restoration Comedy is enjoying a revival on our contemporary stages. The aim of this one day workshop is to explore the vocal and physical skills required for performing the genre. 

The morning session will briefly contextualise the role of Restoration Comedy in British theatre and consider its legacy today.  It will go on to explore the vocal demands of the texts, such as verbal agility, dissembling and wordplay. This practical work will then be applied to ‘finding a voice’ for the range of character types found in the plays.  The final part of the morning session will explore the physical style of movement required for the genre, including posture, stance and gesturing. The afternoon session will marry the voice and movement work explored earlier through working with longer extracts taken from Restoration Comedies. It will conclude by looking briefly at how subsequent playwrights have drawn on the style in their own writing.

Texts used in the workshop will include Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The School for Scandal – on the Edexcel A Level Drama syllabus, William Wycherley’s The Country Wife, George Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer, William Congreve’s The Way of the World, Mary Pix’s The Beau Defeated as well as Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest and April de Angelis’s Playhouse Creatures. LAMDA also specifies Restoration and Post Restoration as one of the periods that learners can select pieces from at Level 3 - Bronze, Silver and Gold Medal.

By the end of the workshop, it is hoped that participants will have a ‘tool kit’ of ideas to take back into the Drama Studio or Classroom to introduce learners to performing Restoration Comedies and subsequent plays written in the Comedy of Manners style. The workshop is designed to support the teaching of GCSE and A Level courses in the Performing Arts, as well as LAMDA qualifications.

Saturday 10th November, 10am-4pm
For all information visit www.offthetextworkshops.com