ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the historical background of Stanislavski’s work with Shakespeare, and the origins behind Cicely Berry’s approach to the text. It questions the effectiveness in using Stanislavski’s method of actions (which are led by character, objective, and context) when working on Shakespeare’s text for acting students with dyslexia. This method is compared with Cicely Berry’s approach, which has an emphasis on ‘being on the word’, an experiencing of the images within the words, to enable comprehension, clarity of thought, and spoken fluency. It considers Peter Hall’s rejection of Stanislavski’s emphasis on the character’s objective or emotion, rather than an observance of the text itself. It also notes other practitioners’ concerns about taking a naturalist approach to Shakespeare, such as Linklater, Gaskill, Brook, Saint-Denis, and Ford Davis, and John Barton’s more open approach to Stanislavski’s methods. A case study of two individuals’ with dyslexia and their creation of a physical storyboard is presented as a tool to memorize classical text for performance. It examines and analyzes the rationale for their choreographing of a physical sequence as a device for remembering the words, rather than providing a route to accessing meaning.
