Podcast: The Working Actor's Journey (LS 31 · TOP 5% what is this?)
Episode: Text Work: Hamlet's "Advice to the Players" with Randall Duk Kim and Annie Occhiogrosso
Pub date: 2020-03-10

Notes from The Listener:

Practical advice podcast in which experienced actors share their wisdom with the next generation in their industry. This is a short episode, extracted from a longer conversation elsewhere on the feed. It focuses in on a particular text: the monologue from Hamlet in which the hero gives advice to the actors he has hired. "Let your own discretion be your tutor," he says, and the experts here speak to the necessity for actors to hone their own sense of discretion — an instinct and judgement to what each moment of a play needs

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In this episode, Randall and Annie share insights into working on Shakespeare through the appropriately chosen piece, Hamlet's "Advice to the Players"—the one that begins "Speak the speech I pray you".

You'll hear Randall and Annie discuss:

Some of the most important advice that actors can take from Hamlet's words
How an actor can use and develop his or her own "discretion"
How to look at Shakespeare's First Folio, and how to play with it to find all the clues

Plus we chat about why "updated" productions of Shakespeare can make the audience feel distant, and instead, how to make it exciting!

This is such a great session and it was so fun to hear them share how the texts are really like musical scores for actors—showing you how to make sense of these works and perform them! These two are amazing teachers and have so much to share!

Click here for full show notes and links.

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Randall's monologue from Hamlet by Shakespeare - the "Advice to the Players" (from the First Folio)

Speake the Speech I pray you, as I pronounc'd it to you trippingly on the Tongue: But if you mouth it, as many of your Players do, I had as liue the Town-Cryer had spoke my Lines: Nor do not saw the Ayre too much your hand thus, but vse all gently; for in the verie Tor- rent, Tempest, and (as I may say) the Whirle-winde of Passion, you must acquire and beget a Temperance that may giue it Smoothnesse. O it offends mee to the Soule, to see a robustious Pery-wig-pated Fellow, teare a Passi- on to tatters, to verie ragges, to split the eares of the Groundlings: who (for the most part) are capeable of nothing, but inexplicable dumbe shewes, & noise: I could haue such a Fellow whipt for o're-doing Termagant: it out- Herod's Herod. Pray you auoid it. Be not too tame neyther: but let your owne Discretion be your Tutor. Sute the Action to the Word, the Word to the Action, with this speciall obseruance: That you ore-stop not the modestie of Nature; for any thing so ouer-done, is frõ the purpose of Playing, whose end both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twer the Mirrour vp to Nature; to shew Vertue her owne Feature, Scorne her owne Image, and the verie Age and Bodie of the Time, his forme and pressure. Now, this ouer-done, or come tardie off, though it make the vnskil- full laugh, cannot but make the Iudicious greeue; The censure of the which One, must in your allowance o're- way a whole Theater of Others. Oh, there bee Players that I haue seene Play, and heard others praise, and that highly (not to speake it prophanely) that neyther hauing the accent of Christians, nor the gate of Christian, Pagan, or Norman, haue so strutted and bellowed, that I haue thought some of Natures Iouerney-men had made men, and not made them well, they imitated Humanity so ab- hominably.

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