Scaffolded learning: a model of historically informed performance practice and action research in Rehearsing Shakespeare

Abstract

This article demonstrates how the action research spiral was used to develop and teach two versions of a second-year university subject called Rehearsing Shakespeare. The course explored historically informed rehearsal practices in order to demonstrate how working actors in the early modern theatre used Shakespeare’s texts as tools for performance. The article reveals how the concept of ‘scaffolding’, used to train apprentice actors in the early modern theatre, became central to the development of the course.

Keywords:

• Shakespeare
• rehearsal
• parts
• distributed cognition

Notes

1 Kemmis et al. (2014, p. 9) argue that the traditional method of action research, as developed by Kurt Lewin, relied on the positivist model of a ‘non-participant researcher [italics original]’. As I was reflecting on my own practice, I was anything but ‘disinterested’.

2 Historically Informed Performance (HIP) practice is a term used more in classical music than in theatre, which tends to use the term Original Practices (Tucker 2002; Weingust 2014). Like Don Weingust (2014, p. 8), I prefer the term from music as it suggests practices and techniques that do not pretend to replicate the whole performative experience of the early modern world; rather, they allow contemporary researchers and practitioners to gain some insight or new perspective on early modern texts.

3 In 2017 I taught with Dr Robin Dixon who took another tutorial group, and I wish to acknowledge his contribution to this iteration of the course.

4 I will use the masculine pronoun when referring specifically to early modern actors. For actors more generally, my pronouns will be gender neutral.

5 Patrick Tucker (2002, p. 38), working practically using Original Practices, arrived at a similar conclusion: ‘I found that instead of giving specific entrances, I could give general ones … This association of an entrance with a general thought works well, and actors are able to remember it’. Although this is not what Fitzpatrick proposes, it does correspond to the principle of cognitive thrift that underpins his theory.

6 The scenes they performed in the monologues and duologues were: King Henry VI, Part 2 III.2: Margaret and Suffolk; Measure for Measure: II.4 Angelo and Isabella and III.1 Claudio and Isabella; Macbeth: Lady Macbeth and Macbeth in I.7 and II.2.

7 This included Lyla, a Korean student, who played one of the Violas and was acting for the first time in this course.