Shakespeare Company: When Action is Eloquence is the first comprehensive insight into this internationally acclaimed company founded in 1978 in Lenox, Massachusetts, by actor-director Tina Packer and voice pioneer Kristin Linklater, with the transformative power of Shakespeare’s language at its heart. Why act Shakespeare? What’s his relevance in the twenty-first century? Compelling answers to these questions lie at the center of this highly accessible journey into Shakespeare & Company’s aesthetics and practice. Drawing on hitherto unpublished material – including notebooks, lectures, interviews, rehearsal diaries – and the Company’s newly collated archive, this book provides insight into a working theatre company and sheds light on the role Shakespeare plays in our modern world. It also details: Shakespeare Company’s founding and early history, Its aesthetic based on the Elizabethan theatre’s principles of the Art of Rhetoric; Structure of the Verse; Voice and Movement; Clown; Fight; and Actor/Audience Relationship, Vocational components of its Training, Intensives, Practical pedagogy of its Educatio programs, Insights into its unique approaches to Performance, Impact and legacy of its three lifetime founding members: Dennis Krausnick (Director of Training), Kevin G. Coleman (Director of Education) and Tina Packer (founding artistic director). Actors, directors, students, educators, scholars and theatre-lovers alike will find practical acting strategies, inspirational approaches to theatre making and lively insights into the sustaining of a unique and robust theatre company that has been thriving for over 40 years.

This groundbreaking collection explores the important ways Jesuits have employed rhetoric, the ancient art of persuasion and the current art of communications, from the sixteenth century to the present. Much of the history of how Jesuit traditions contributed to the development of rhetorical theory and pedagogy has been lost, effaced, or dispersed. As a result, those interested in Jesuit education and higher education in the United States, as well as scholars and teachers of rhetoric, are often unaware of this living 450-year-old tradition. Written by highly regarded scholars of rhetoric, composition, education, philosophy, and history, many based at Jesuit colleges and universities, the essays in this volume explore the tradition of Jesuit rhetorical education—that is, constructing “a more usable past” and a viable future for eloquentia perfecta, the Jesuits’ chief aim for the liberal arts. Intended to foster eloquence across the curriculum and into the world beyond, Jesuit rhetoric integrates intellectual rigor, broad knowledge, civic action, and spiritual discernment as the chief goals of the educational experience. Consummate scholars and rhetors, the early Jesuits employed all the intellectual and language arts as “contemplatives in action,” preaching and undertaking missionary, educational, and charitable works in the world. The study, pedagogy, and practice of classical grammar and rhetoric, adapted to Christian humanism, naturally provided a central focus of this powerful educational system as part of the Jesuit commitment to the Ministries of the Word. This book traces the development of Jesuit rhetoric in Renaissance Europe, follows its expansion to the United States, and documents its reemergence on campuses and in scholarly discussions across America in the twenty-first century. Traditions of Eloquence provides a wellspring of insight into the past, present, and future of Jesuit rhetorical traditions. In a period of ongoing reformulations and applications of Jesuit educational mission and identity, this collection of compelling essays helps provide historical context, a sense of continuity in current practice, and a platform for creating future curricula and pedagogy. Moreover it is a valuable resource for anyone interested in understanding a core aspect of the Jesuit educational heritage.

An exploration of the culture of public speaking in the Iberian world, which places the classical rhetorical tradition within the context of Iberian global expansion in Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.

Shows how theater was essential to the anti-slavery movement's consideration of forceful resistance

"During his lifetime, Rev. Dr. Gardner C. Taylor was hailed by TIME magazine as the dean of America's black preachers. Newsweek honored him as one of the 12 greatest preachers in the English-speaking world. A civil rights leader, a Presidential Medal of Honor recipient, and a longtime pastor, Taylor was called "the poet laureate of American Protestantism." In this critical volume, scholar and pastor Joseph Evans analyzes the art of Taylor's preaching according to the five classical canons of rhetoric, celebrating in particular his excellence in narrative eloquence, which was the heart of his persuasive proclamation. Through a close reading of Taylor's sermons and careful scholarship in the discipline of rhetoric, Evans provides homileticians and rhetoricians alike with an incisive and accessible understanding of the oratorical brilliance of the man whose eloquence transcended theological boundaries and sociopolitical and cultural constructs"--