About the Book
Acting Heightened Text: The Basics offers a foundational understanding of heightened text in drama, fused with a truthful, contemporary approach to acting.
Using detailed text analysis and dynamic rehearsal exercises, actors and students bring heightened language to life by cultivating a joyful curiosity. A three-step homework process focuses attention on demystifying the intricacies of verse and prose, conveying meaning, clarifying changes in action (subtle shifts and beat changes), playing actions, and utilizing tactics. An innovative technique called hooking sparks energy between partners, and focuses actors on responding to impulses to create a wide variety of textually-supported choices. The book includes up-to-date practical approaches to effective auditions, callbacks and rehearsals, specific tools for handling rhyming couplets, complex rhetorical arguments, and materials to support a lifelong pursuit of engaging with dramatic material with rigor and passion.
Acting Heightened Text: The Basics provides a wealth of resources for actors, directors, students, and teachers to navigate the demands and embrace the challenges within dramatic texts.
To support the learning process and enhance the understanding of the lessons from the book, please visit the Support Material, available at www.routledge.com/9781032695297. These include scenes and monologues for practice, real-life examples of students using these techniques, and detailed examples from the Try It! sections within each chapter, such as line-outs, action verbs, rhetorical maps, and hooking.
Table of Contents:
1. Demystifying Verse 2. A Foundation of Meaning 3. Conveying the Ideas: Emphasis on Words, Thoughts, Ideas & Images 4. Connecting to the Partner and the Situation 5. Hooking: Active Listening and Responding to Impulses with Hooking Illustrations by Leanna Yatcilla 6. Playing Intentions, Actions, and Tactics 7. Advanced Skills: Prose, Rhetoric, and Rhyming Couplets 8. Helpful Advice for Callbacks, Rehearsal, and Performance
About the Author :
Catherine Weidner is a professional actor and director. She was the founding Program Director for The Shakespeare Theatre Academy for Classical Acting at the George Washington University and taught acting heightened text at DePaul University and Ithaca College.
Review :
“Catherine Weidner’s knowledge and expertise surrounding heightened text helped me to demystify the language, while simultaneously simplifying Shakespeare and acting into relatable terms: do the work. In theater, much is made of talent and instinct, but heightened text has a way revealing an actor’s preparation, whether it be substantial or lacking. What Acting Heightened Text: The Basics provides is a toolbox for the modern actor, equipped with a variety of insights and immersions that invites the artist to delve into the work as deeply as they wish.”
Kevin Bigley, Writer/Actor
“The best thing about Acting Heightened Text: The Basics is that it doesn’t just apply to heightened text. There is no script that I work on that I don’t clearly mark beats/shifts; or perhaps if my character uses language/vocabulary that I don’t normally use, I will employ the line-out method to put the language into my own words. I use hooking to highlight the connective tissue between what I am saying and what another character has said. If there is an operative word that will help me land my action or intent more clearly, I mark it. Catherine Weidner taught me how to use tools that I continue to use today to ensure I truly understand what I am saying and that what I am intending to communicate is clear, whether it is considered heightened text or not.”
KiKi Layne, Actor/Producer, If Beale Street Could Talk, The Old Guard
“Acting Heightened Text: The Basic’s approach changed me as an artist for the better. What was once daunting and intimidating became approachable and exciting! I use many of Catherine’s tools to this day when mining scripts for meaningful moments."
Taylor Misiak, FX/Hulu's Dave
“It’s difficult to put into a few sentences what Acting Heightened Text: The Basics did for me. I studied Shakespeare for almost 15 years before I entered Catherine’s class - yet what I learned under her tutelage put all that into a completely different light. Her approach has a way of making 500-year-old words and ideas so modern, so present and so immediate that you feel like they were written ten minutes ago. I wish upon wish I could take her class every couple months from now until forever.”
Adam Wesley Brown, Actor/Musician, Once, Widows
"Catherine Weidner’s teaching profoundly influenced how I understand and use language, particularly in how it can both reveal and conceal deeper meanings. The lessons in Acting Heightened Text: The Basics provided me with a valuable tool to recognize that a single word can have various meanings based on context, intent, and timing. This insight has greatly enriched my approach to my work, both past and present, allowing me to explore what lies beneath the surface of what’s being said. It’s a gift that continues to benefit me in my work."
Yaegel T. Welch, Actor/Activist on Broadway, Television, and Film
I'm grateful to have learned the techniques in Acting Heightened Text: The Basics. Catherine’s approach invited me to bring my full self without apology to my work. Shakespeare was intimidating at first, but these tools break it down in a way that felt easy and fun. I still use given circumstances, paraphrase, and operative words in my work today.
Celeste M. Cooper, Member Steppenwolf Theatre Ensemble
"Before I worked with Catherine Weidner, Shakespeare and heightened text felt a million miles away. Acting Heightened Text gives you the roadmap to walk closer to the part and enliven it in you, which is always the goal of the actor. When Shakespeare feels like a foreign language, her tools guide you to make it relatable, human and truthful in yourself."
Alexander Koch, Actor/Writer
"Acting Heightened Text: The Basics is an essential guide for actors and directors tackling the demands of challenging language. With infectious enthusiasm, Catherine Weidner, veteran actor, director, and inspired teaching artist, provides the most sensible proven pathways to speaking heightened text believably, spontaneously, and convincingly. She has charted a sound course, a scholarly yet down to earth roadmap, in a refreshingly gritty way, mainly because she has spent her entire career in the trenches with the actor, speaking their language, both literally and figuratively.”
Gary Logan, Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama/ Author, The Eloquent Shakespeare
