The third annual Summer Shakespeare program kicked off on Monday, July 7, 2008. Twenty two New York City teenagers were selected from a competitive pool of applicants. Director of Outreach Carlos Caldart welcomed the student artists to the Studio on Monday and distributed scripts for William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, which they will be presenting at the end of the four week program. The Summer Shakespeare ensemble will meet daily and take classes in Voice and Speech with Dusty, Movement for Actors with Yvette, and Scene Study with Robin.

On Tuesday the ensemble received their casting and immediately got to work on the text in their first table reading of the play. Table readings are used for the cast and director to get better acquainted with each other and the text. A basic understanding of the storyline, character relationships and thematic vocabulary are often explored in table readings.

The ensemble had their first Movement for Actors class with Yvette on Wednesday. Movement for Actors, or physical acting, helps actors to express their character’s intentions and desires through the body, and often, without words.

During the week the students take classes in two separate groups, each with eleven people in it. On Friday, the ensemble had their first class with both groups working together led by Carlos and Yvette. Several different physical and imaginative exercises explored things like animal instincts, the spiritual world, physicalizing royalty and aristocracy and ambition and power.