Sonnet Book

We have a run of 750 sonnetbooks. Each book signed by William S

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Masterclass in OP in NYC

New York – March 2015 Shakespeare Society Event 16th March – Ben Crystal on Original Pronunciation Masterclass – Wednesday 18th March 10am – 6pm Cost: $175 USD Location: Ripley Grier studios […]

OP Pericles in Pictures

How ludicrous is this? A 17 member Symphony ensemble from Trondheim with English soloist Daniel Hope plays Max Richter’s 4 seasons by Vivaldi as backdrop to an Original Practice and Pronunciation version of Pericles from Ben Crystal’s ensemble of 13 actors. […]

OP reviewed…Good and bad.

What we explored was how to create an ensemble working within the strictures of cue-script and the new-old accent of OP to see what the results would be. Those results surprised us and the audience. […]

OP and the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

Just got the call ‘Theatre about to go dark’! here at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. Hugely no-real-words-for-it exciting to be in this space today and tomorrow for the sonnet performance at 7pm then saturday at 12 noon for a tech/dress/first try-out of Macbeth and sunday 7pm full read/performance of Macbeth with full complement of cast […]

OP Songs and Sonnets by Shakespeare

How does OP affect singing and reciting?

It’s becoming increasingly clear that OP is the great leveller of the Shakespeare playing field. By that I mean a possible re-exploration of the canon without resorting to conceptual renewal, be it sci-fi, zombie, colonial plantation.

The OP accent is not about historical revisionism. (An utterly […]

Original Practice or Faith based acting

Elizabethan actors had no Stanlavski, Strasberg, Adler, Meisner, Meyerhold, Grotowski etc. type schools of thought attached to their acting. They had senses, memory, and imagination. An actor given a cue script has no context, only text. […]

OP MACBETH and his BANQUO

Macbeth is about a man who should have been King but was murdered by his noble partner and supposed best friend. Or simply put: AMBITION. Or rather ambition thwarted. We know it is a tragedy and that means the title character will inevitably die. […]

Educating Rita…

The old joke typifies my acting career: ‘I didn’t get into acting for fame and fortune. And so far it’s working.’ Like Rita I made a choice. And like her it was the only choice i could make. Without this, mere oblivion. I didn’t choose acting, it chose me. […]

Passion in Practice Pericles

Our ears cannot be closed, whilst we live, speak, and breathe. Just back from experimenting with the Passion in Practice crew at the Jerwood Space in Bankside, Southwark. […]

Shakespeare Unbound…in a nutshell

…It all began with the internet. Just to be clear fb friends are people you interact with online and have never met in person. if we meet we will click. Shared interest in Shakespeare is enough but there’s more. There’s a difference towards the kooky the quirky the little bit out of the ordinary. […]