The Readiness is All – Speaking Shakespeare for Performance
with Actor, Writer and Theatre Practitioner, Mike Jenkins
Break through the barriers of speaking Shakespeare in this voice, speech and acting workshop.
Sat 15th March, 2025
2:15pm – 5pm
The New Park Centre, Jubilee Hall, Chichester
£20 Per Person, Concessions Available
The workshop will introduce you to:
- A professional actors voice warm up (breath, body, speech muscles)
- Techniques to free the voice & explore the meaning and emotion contained in the words
- The power of Shakespearean verse, meter, iambic and other devices and clues that Shakespeare gives us
- Speaking to other performers in a unique group speaking exercise
- Using your voice as an instrument, overcoming fear of classical and heightened text through voice-play
- Rehearsal techniques and short masterclass-style coaching, culminating in performances at the end of the session
Using sonnets, speeches and dialogue from scenes, you’ll explore text exercises that reveal the meaning and power of the words.
This workshop includes a professional actors voice warm up, speech exercises and rehearsal techniques to craft a performance.
You’ll leave with a toolbox of practical exercises you can use to work on any text for performance and you’ll have had first hand experience of what it feels like to speak Shakespeare for performance.
WORKSHOPS
Experienced in designing & leading theatre, acting, and creative writing workshops, Mike can work with young people in schools and colleges and with adults in businesses and community groups.
VIEW WORKSHOPS
WRITING
Mike writes plays, scripts, poems, articles and blog posts and has a particular interest in writing about meditation and spiritual practice. Discover new and emerging work and get in touch if you’d like to collaborate.
VIEW WRITING
PERFORMANCES
View details of upcoming events where Mike will be performing, find out how to hire him as a speaker or a performer for an event and read about some of the productions he has appeared in over the years.
VIEW PERFORMANCES
POEMS
Read and listen to selection of original poems here, purchase a copy of Mike’s first full collection of Selected Poems and connect with Words Out Loud.
VIEW POEMS
You Are Better Than My Pen
A powerful new voice in contemporary verse. From the streets of a Belfast childhood to wandering in Downtown New York, from meditations on life in rural, cathedral-town Sussex to the deep, flowing rivers of desire, this first collection of poetry from Mike Jenkins mixes the numinal with the everyday, the earthy with the spiritual, and the romantic with the carnal.
With stories of hope, love, and happiness in fleeting moments, and pain, longing, and despair in others, these poems are never less than beautiful, honest, and breathtakingly original – sharing the voices of mothers, fathers, lovers, and – at times – of darkness itself. But at the heart of this collection is a simple idea: trying to capture the essence of moments that are sometimes more powerful than the pen.
