What goes through a man's mind when he is playing Hamlet? How does Shakespeare's best-known play actually work, from the inside? Steven Berkoff is an actor, playwright, and director with an extraordinary talent for conveying powerful ideas and emotions. His production of Hamlet, in which he took the title role, began in Edinburgh in 1979, went on to the Round House in London, and toured throughout Europe for the next two years. The company completed its final performance as guests of Jean-Louis Barrault at his Rond Point Theater, where the audience gave the production a tempestuous ovation. During the tour Berkoff kept a journal and recorded the workings of the play from the director/actor's point of view. On the basis of that diary Berkoff has created an intensely personal analysis of the play with a line-by-line examination of the text and the way he approached it in his production. His detailed observations show how his imagination covers a wide range of human experience--from love and death to the nature of marriage and the messianic fervor of Hamlet. I Am Hamlet not only reveals the mind of a fascinating actor and director at work, it is also a singular encounter with a part that "touches the complete alphabet of human experience" and that every actor feels he is born to play.
Steven Berkoff Bücher
Steven Berkoff ist ein englischer Schauspieler, Schriftsteller und Regisseur, der für seine intensiven Darstellungen bekannt ist. Seine frühen dramatischen Werke, die tief in Kafkas Adaptionen verwurzelt sind, tauchen in albtraumhafte psychologische Landschaften ein und fördern ein beunruhigendes Gefühl der Entfremdung. Berkoff leistete später Pionierarbeit für einen eigenen Stil, bekannt als 'Total Theatre', der sich durch seine rohe, physische Intensität und konfrontative Ästhetik auszeichnet. Kritiker beschreiben sein Werk als 'direkt ins Gesicht', das aufgrund seiner viszeralen Kraft und seiner unerschrockenen Auseinandersetzung mit schwierigen Themen extreme Reaktionen beim Publikum hervorrufen kann.
Physical Theatres: A Critical Reader is an invaluable resource for students of physically orientated theatre and performance. This book aims to trace the roots and development of physicality in theatre by combining practical experience of the field with a strong historical and theoretical underpinning.In exploring the histories, cross-overs and intersections of physical theatres, this critical Reader provides:six new, specially commissioned essays, covering each of the book s main themes, from technical traditions to contemporary practises discussion of issues such as the foregrounding of the body, training and performance processes, and the origins of theatre in both play and human cognition a focus on the relationship and tensions between the verbal and the physical in theatre contributions from Augusto Boal, Stephen Berkoff, tienne Decroux, Bertolt Brecht, David George, J-J. Rousseau, Ana Sanchez Colberg, Michael Chekhov, Jeff Nuttall, Jacques Lecoq, Yoshi Oida, Mike Pearson, and Aristotle.