AGES 13-18
Speaking Shakespeare Speeches as Soliloquies
August 28th 10am – 3pm
*PREPERATION: PLEASE HAVE MEMORIZED ONE MONOLOGUE OR TWO SONNETS
*PLEASE ENROLL BY AUGUST 21ST
Most of Shakespeare’s longer speeches for characters are soliloquies—a moment when a character shares their inner feelings with the audience alone. This workshop will provide guidance to help you engage with the character’s emotions as well as interpret and speak Shakespearean verse. This workshop is a great way to prepare if you’re looking to perform a classical text. The class will culminate in a presentation of the students’ work on the Bay Street Theater Mainstage for family and friends to attend.
Paul Hecht made his debut on Broadway as the Player in Tom Stoppards Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead, (Tony award nomination 1968).His most recent Broadway appearance was in the dual roles of John Ruskin & Jerome K. Jerome in Stoppards Invention of Love. Other Broadway roles include John Dickinson in 1776 (performed at the Nixon White House), Nathan in the Bock-Harnick musical Rothschilds, Rufio in Shaws Caesar & Cleopatra, and Belcredi in Pirandellos Henry IV, (both with Rex Harrison), Dick Wagner in Tom Stoppards Night & Day, (with Maggie Smith), and the Director in Noises Off, Herzl by Dore Schary, and Don Juan by Moliere, for the New Phoenix Rep.
Off Broadway: George Pye in Humble Boy (Charlotte Jones) at the Manhattan Theater Club and on tour in the UK with the National Theatre. Ralph in the American Premiere of Harold Pinters Moonlight at the Roundabout (with Jason Robards), and Neil Simons London Suite.
Other appearances Off-Broadway include MacBird & Sjt. Musgraves Dance. For his portrayal of Pirandello's Henry IV at the Roundabout he received an OBIE award . (1990).
Around the country he has appeared as Cyrano in the world premiere of the Anthony Burgess translation at the Guthrie in Minneapolis , and as Marc Antony in both Julius Caesar and Antony & Cleopatra at the American Shakespeare Festival Stratford Connecticut. He has performed with the NY Shakespeare Festival in such roles as Henry V, MacDuff, and Menenius in Coriolanus (with Christopher Walken).
He has performed in plays by Shaw, Chekhov, Turgenev, Handke, Kaufman-Ferber, Brecht, Harwood, Osborne, Dickens and Pinter, at Canadas Shaw Festival, McCarter:Princeton, Manitoba Theater Center, John Drew:East Hampton, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Baystreet:Sag Harbor, & Lincoln Center.
He has appeared in Movies with,Jeremy Irons, Howard Stern, Sissy Spacek, James Woods, Jane Fonda and Kris Kristofferson
TV audiences may have recognized him over the years as Charles in Kate and Allie, and as a variety of unsavory characters in Law & Order, Queer as Folk, Family Re-Union (with Bette Davis), I’ll Take Manhattan ( with Valerie Bertinelli) , All My Children, One Life To Live, Another World, As the World Turns, Starsky & Hutch, Hawaii 5/0, Remington Steele, and the premiere episode of Miami Vice.
He has recorded extensively for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, where he began his career as a staff announcer in Montreal in the early ‘60’s. During that time he worked with the legendary radio director Rupert Caplan and hosted a live radio show from Expo ’67.
He appeared frequently on Hi Brown's CBS Radio Mystery Theater, and narrated Oscar Wildes short story The Selfish Giant (Oscar Nomination 1968). He has recorded dozens of books for Recorded Books (Alexander McCall Smith, Ray Bradbury, William Safire, Thomas Mann). He has appeared at Selected Shorts and Bloomsday at Symphony Space , at the Morgan Library and the Unterberg Poetry Center at the 92nd st Y.. where he directed Edna St Vincent Millays Conversation at Midnight.He appeared in Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (Stoppard/Previn) and Façade (Walton/Sitwell) with the Philadelphia Orchestra and, was the Narrator of Stravinsky’s Histoire du Soldat, conducted by Robert Craft.He has performed with the Allentown Symphony, Dryden Players, Newberry Consort, and also performs a program of John Donne poetry with the Early Music Group Parthenia. He reads to children as part of NY State’s Pre K for all program.(Bookpals) He was a member of the first graduating class of the National Theatre School of Canada(1963), and served as President of the New York Branch of SAG from 1991-1995.
