Every Friday is a master class with someone prominent in the theatre and film field to come and do some work with us. Fiona Shaw was our first. You might most immediately recognize her at Aunt Petunia from Harry Potter, but was also in My Left Foot, Persuasion, The Black Dahlia, Catch and Release, and Fracture, (just to name a few). But it is her theatre career that is most impressive. She played Richard II in Shakespeare's Richard II at the Royal Shakespeare Company, a production which was very controversial, but endured due to it's non-traditional casting and original concept. She also played Medea in the West End, and took it to Broadway in 2003.
She came and worked monologues with us, very much in a style Daina Robins (my acting professor at Hope) would do. This means several things: first and foremost getting the actor to find for himself how the text directly relates to his life. Secondly, we in the audience would give feedback throughout the monologue in support of the actor; support like being the audience of a Jerry Springer show, which meant the actor had to work extra hard to get the audience on his side to gain approval. I found her to be very personable and very intelligent when it came to her work, and she was a joy to learn from.
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