Performing Shakespeare Like a Pro
Make it Sparkle Video with Tim Mooney
Performer & Playwright
9:41 (runtime)
Director’s Notes
Tim Mooney, performer and playwright, highlights his unique performance style that includes a mix of Shakespeare's monologues and snarky narrations to keep the audience engaged.
He discusses his book, "Acting at the Speed of Life", which identifies two fundamental responsibilities of an actor: being seen and being heard.
Tim argues against the trend towards realism in acting, suggesting that it denies the audience's desire to connect with the actor through eye contact and facial expressions.
He highlights the importance of actors showing their presence and emotions, and not just maintaining constant eye contact with other actors on stage as it reduces audience engagement.
In order to be heard, Tim emphasizes the importance of clear articulation, especially when performing Shakespeare, and encourages actors to project their voice to resonate with the audience.
He introduces a workshop exercise that includes 'rattling the lights' for projection and 'making ugly faces' for full articulation, demonstrating how emotion lives in the willingness to fully express.
About Tim Mooney
Timothy Mooney is the author/adaptor of "Breakneck Hamlet," "Breakneck Julius Caesar," "Lot o' Shakespeare," as well as "Shakespeare's Histories; Ten Epic Plays at a Breakneck Pace!" new one-man plays which "crack the code" on Shakespeare's most challenging work, which, along with his play "The Greatest Speech of All Time," makes challenging rhetorical delivery accessible to audiences everywhere. Mooney's newest play, "Man Cave, a One-Man Sci-Fi Climate Change Tragicomedy, has been celebrated as a "haunting and hilarious" awakening to the critical urgency of the climate crisis.
Mooney's acting textbook "Acting at the Speed of Life" breathes life into stylistic performance at high schools and colleges, while his "Big Book of Molière Monologues," has given actors everywhere a new resource for comic classical auditions. Over twenty years, Tim's very first one-man play, "Molière than Thou," drawn from his seventeen new adaptations of the plays of Molière (featuring Mooney's impish sense of rhyme) has been presented over 500 times, giving some hundred thousand students their first introduction to Molière. These iambic pentameter variations (most published by Playscripts and Stage Rights) have been produced well over 150 times around the world, winning competitions at high school, regional and national festivals.
Tim's latest adaptation is a new rhymed version of Goldoni's "The Servant of Two Masters." Mr. Mooney continues to present his (now) TEN one-man shows across North America under the umbrella of the "Timothy Mooney Repertory Theatre."