6/16/2022

The Winter’s Tale

Director: KP Powell

RDA Stage Manager: Keith Hale

RDA Dramaturg: Kailey Potter

Interns: Mary Rose Valentine, Margot Waldman, Topher Zane

Today, KP continued working with campers on acting and blocking in our black box theater space. Upstairs, campers who weren’t working with KP worked with other members of staff on scansion, paraphrasing, and memorization. Many of Shakespeare’s characters speak in verse. This means their lines are in iambic pentameter. These lines follow a ten-syllable pattern with alternating stressed and unstressed syllables. However, a character’s verse may sometimes become irregular. This is especially common in The Winter’s Tale. The campers “scan” their lines by marking the stressed and unstressed syllables. Shakespeare can be hard to understand, so campers go through their scripts and paraphrase each line. Once they have scanned and paraphrased, learning their lines becomes much simpler. Understanding the words is crucial for remembering them and the rhythm of iambic pentameter gives a roadmap for the campers to repeat a line verbatim.