Name: What Would Garrick Do? Acting Lessons from the Eighteenth Century
Start: 2024-05-11T19:00:00+01:00
End: 2024-05-11T20:30:00+01:00
Location: Garrick's Temple to Shakespeare

What Would Garrick Do? Acting Lessons from the Eighteenth Century

A talk on how Garrick and his contemporaries thought about acting, and how their ideas and practices might change the way we do theatre now.
About this Event

James Harriman-Smith, a senior lecturer and orator at Newcastle University, will be speaking about his new book: What Would Garrick Do? Or, Acting Lessons from the Eighteenth Century. Developed in collaboration with professional and amateur companies around the UK, this book takes the theatrical work of Garrick and other luminaries of his time and puts it into conversation with modern performance practice.

James's talk will reveal what Garrick would do when heckled, when faced rushing a play into rehearsal, when trying to impress French intellectuals, when when training his voice and body, and more. It will also show how our own thinking about twenty-first century theatre might evolve when we ask ourselves - as people did three hundred years ago - what would Garrick do?

Event attendees will receive a flyer offering a discount of copies of What Woud Garrick Do?

Further information is available about the book on the Bloomsbury website.

The event is free but seating is limited. So please reserve a place early. Further information about Garrick's Temple is available on the venue website.

Selected praise for What Would Garrick Do?

"An original, learned, and practical book, which not only brings the theatre of the eighteenth century to vibrant and immediate life, but also makes Garrick's theatre useful to the theatre of today. A hugely enjoyable and absorbing study of a long-neglected era of theatre history."

Tom Little, Artistic Director, Orange Tree Theatre

"...a refreshing an innovative approach to being open-minded about acting practices of the past"

Liz Kuti, Playwright and Professor, University of Essex

"Peeling back the celebrity gloss, this book delves into the performance practice that thrilled eighteenth-century audiences, offering a range of exercices for the modern performer seeking to bring all kinds of plays to life today."

Gilli Bush-Bailey, Professor Emerita, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama