Acting the Role of BEATRICE (Shakespeare’s “Much Ado”) in The Rehearsal Room for July 2024 with director Erika Rolfsrud, dramaturg Cathleen Sheehan and actors Juls Hoover, Anu Bhatt and Shannon Lee Clair!

This month, we’ll focus on the role of BEATRICE in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing as three different actors will work on scenes and speeches from the play. We’ll dive into what makes this character tick and understanding her full arc.

Our director Erika Rolfsrud has played the role Off-Broadway and in Cleveland at the Great Lakes Theater Festival. And one of our actors, Shannon Lee Clair, has played the part onstage too!

As Erika says: As I revisit Ms Bea, rereading her text, I leave it feeling frisky, wistful, and revved up! I’m SO excited!

Catch the weekly sessions on YouTube and the podcast!

The Rehearsal Room is its own weekly “show”, reaching more actors, artists, and theatre lovers who would benefit from:

1. a deeper examination of material
2. insight into how the collaborative process brings a show to life

I’d love for you to follow along, so just click below to subscribe to our YouTube channel – and then click the bell icon to get notification of when new videos are released!

The scenes for July’s workshop

Our group will be working on various sections from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing

• First scene group: Act I, Scene I, lines 30-92 and Act I, Scene I, lines 111-143
  • “I pray you, is Signior Mountanto returned from the wars or no?” thru “No, not till a hot January.”
  • “If Signior Leonato be her father, … as like him as she is.” thru “I know you of old.”
• Second scene group: Act II, Scene I, lines 1-81 and Act II, Scene I, lines 123-152
  • “Was not Count John here at supper?” thru “… I can see a church by daylight.”
  • “Will you not tell me who told you so?” thru “… I will lead them at the next turning.”
• Third scene group: Act IV, Scene I, lines 269-350
  • “Lady Beatrice, have you wept all this while?” thru “I must say she is dead, and so farewell.”

Scenes from the Folger Shakespeare Library: Act I, Scene I; Act II, Scene I; and Act IV, Scene I.

ATR: Beatrice Team – bios below:

• DIRECTOR: Erika Rolfsrud
• DRAMATURG: Cathleen Sheehan
• And the PLAYERS…
  • Juls Hoover
  • Anu Bhatt
  • Shannon Lee Clair

Each actor will have the opportunity to work on the role of Beatrice!

REPLAYS (both video and audio) will be available weekly in July, starting Tuesday, July 16th.

As a PATRON (starting at just $5), you can also get:

• Viewing of the sessions early (3-4 days before they go public)
• Priority access to ask questions of the artists
• And other perks

Get EARLY access and more via Patreon!

Want to be in the Room where it happens? 😉

These sessions are always filled with amazing scene work, and you’ll learn:

• how professional artists approach material
• what questions to ask
• what the director expects from actors
• how to find character clues from the text
• how the exploration never stops!

The great joy of these programs is that we get to:

• spend SO much time diving deep on a scene and characters
• bring together lifelong professionals with newer/younger actors
• cast roles while being totally open to race, gender, and age

Artist Bios – a mostly California crew with our director in New York!

Erika Rolfsrud (DIRECTOR) has appeared on Broadway in The Coast of Utopia, Rabbit Hole, and Exit The King. She has also appeared Off-Broadway and in regional theatre. In films, Erika has appeared in Unsane, Alone and Dream Date, and on television in Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, Third Watch, Manifest, House of Cards, God Friended Me, Blue Bloods, and more. She has an MFA from Old Globe Theatre/USD.

Cathleen Sheehan (DRAMATURG) is a writer, lecturer and teacher who teaches Shakespeare and Advanced Shakespeare (among other courses) at the Urban School in San Francisco. She has served as a dramaturg for Marin Shakespeare and for California Shakespeare Theater. She holds an AB and MA in English Literature from Stanford University and pursued graduate studies in Victoria Literature at Oxford University.

Juls Hoover studied at San Diego State University, majoring in both Theater and Psychology, and also trained at the British American Drama Academy in Oxford. She also works as a Yoga Teacher while attending graduate school to obtain a Masters in Clinical Psychology with a specialization in Addiction Medicine.

Anu Bhatt has worked at Chicago Shakespeare, Michigan Shakespeare and received her MFA in Acting from the Chicago College of Performing Arts/Roosevelt University. She wrote, acted in, co-directed and edited the short film AutoCorrect which is an official selection to 10 festivals. She’s currently living in LA, working on producing her next film, Crossing the Desert, a bilingual short featuring a queer South Asian woman trying to reconnect with her austere grandmother across the world.

Shannon Lee Clair was born in New York City and has lived most of her life on the west coast, also spending time significant time in Ireland and London. She earned her Bachelor’s in English and Theater at Princeton University and studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. An avid outdoors-woman, Shannon fills most of her vacation time with backpacking or sailing trips.

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