Edward Lewis, U.K.
Edward Lewis is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, holds degrees from The Open, Lancaster and Cambridge universities, and has undertaken Forum Theatre training with Augusto Boal. He has written and directed for the stage a number of adaptations of novels including Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Huxley’s Brave New World, Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend and Barnaby Rudge and Emile Zola’s Nana. His most recent commissioned work is an adaptation of Pushkin’s The Blizzard, performed in Russian in Minsk, Belarus, under his direction. Dividing his time between Britain and abroad, Edward combines university teaching and applied drama practice with theatre work as director, writer and actor. He is currently leading workshops outside the United Kingdom on the speaking of Shakespeare verse, most recently at the TURLg, Liege, Belgium and at the Georgian National Theatre in Tbilisi. Until the military situation in the region made it impossible for him to remain in Iraq, he was leading a new drama programme at Soran University in Kurdistan, and he is now Associate Lecturer in Theatre at Falmouth University, Cornwall.
‘Speak the Words Trippingly’ Speaking Shakespeare’s verse.
Using the performance script and examples from some of Shakespeare’s other plays , this workshop will introduce methods of analysing and performing the written text and decoding the performance clues given by Shakespeare in the rhythmic structure of some of the speeches. The significance of prose and blank-verse usage will also be addressed. Non-native English speakers will find the sessions useful not only for the performance but also in adopting the natural rhythms of everyday English.