Directing Shakespeare Workshops with Will O'Hare
Join theatre director and teaching artist Will O’Hare for two lively workshops at Domino Theatre this fall. These sessions are designed for actors, directors, and theatre enthusiasts who want to get hands-on with Shakespeare’s text. Whether you’re exploring a scene as a director, preparing a monologue as an actor, or simply curious about the plays, you’ll leave with practical tools to make Shakespeare’s words your own.
Workshop One: Directing Shakespeare - Who’s There?
Sunday, September 27 from 1:30pm - 4:30pm REGISTER HERE
Location: Domino Theatre Mainstage & Lounge, 52 Church St, Kingston Ontario
Focus: Reading, Interpretation, and the Director’s Vision
How does a director begin work on a Shakespeare play? Before rehearsals begin, before staging choices are made, before design ideas take shape, the director has to ask: What is this play really about? Whose story are we telling? What world are we creating? What do we want the audience to experience?
In this hands-on workshop, we’ll look for answers on our feet. Participants will explore directing as interpretation by treating the text as a guide to action. Shakespeare’s clues are everywhere: in what a character says and won’t say, where the verse breaks, when a line runs short, who enters, who exits, who is left alone, and how the play includes the audience in the action.
Working through selected scenes and group exercises, we’ll test those clues in the room. What changes when a line is spoken to another character, to the audience, or to the whole room? What does the text already tell us about space, daylight, presence, and the audience?
From there, we’ll move toward the larger work of interpretation. How does a director turn a series of choices into an overall vision? What should be cut, and why? How do you develop a strong idea without letting the concept bury the play?
Participants will leave with a way to approach the plays: how to read for action how to shape choices into a plan and how to create a directing style they can use during rehearsal.
Tools, not rules: this workshop is for directors, actors, teachers, and theatre-makers who want to get Shakespeare off the page and onto the stage.
No directing experience required.
Workshop Two: Directing Shakespeare - From the Page to the Stage
Sunday, November 1 from 1:30pm to 4:30pm REGISTER HERE
Location: Domino Theatre Mainstage & Lounge, 52 Church St, Kingston Ontario
Focus: Actors, Space, Movement, and Staging Choices
This workshop picks up where the first session leaves off: how does an interpretation become theatre?
We’ll explore scenes on their feet. Directing actors. Using space. Staging soliloquies. Handling entrances, exits, crowd scenes, and transitions. Exploring doubling, movement, rhythm, and the actor-audience relationship.
The guiding question is the one every director eventually faces: I have to stage this play in a week. What do I do?
Participants will leave with practical tools they can use in rehearsal right away, whether they are directing, acting, teaching, or simply trying to understand how these plays work onstage.
Workshop One is useful preparation but not required. Each session stands on its own.
Workshop Fee:
- Domino Theatre Members: $15 per workshop
-
Non-Members: $20 per workshop
Workshop space is limited and each workshop will be capped at 24 participants. If the event is full, please add yourself to the waitlist and we will contact you if any spots open up. If you have any questions about the workshops, please contact: astonw@queensu.ca.
More about the Workshop Leader: Will O'Hare
Theatre director, actor, and educator focused on Shakespeare. Some experience highlights: Education Director for the Classical Theatre Project in Toronto, directing plays and creating education workshops; two Dora Award nominations for best production of a play (Twelfth Night, and MacBeth), taught acting Shakespeare for the prestigious Michael Howard Conservatory in New York City; worked with the Shakespeare Society, Globe Theatre (UK) and the Broadway productions of Mary Poppins (premier) and The History Boys. Will is also a freelance photographer with a studio in the Tett Centre.
Producers and Workshop Assistants: Peter Aston and Anna Lindgren-Tanga