Graduate students in theater arts have tackled Shakespeare's sonnets with such exuberance and enthusiasm lately that one teacher below the fourth-floor classroom in Clark Hall ran up the stairs to remind the acting students that other classes were underway.

During his three-week artist-in-residency in theater arts, Geoff Bullen, a visiting British actor and director from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), has been revving up the creative energies in his class, "Verse in Action"—an exploration of Shakespeare's work.

Describing himself as a man with his hand "in every piece of the pie" from acting to directing, Bullen caught the attention of Jerrold Scott, CWRU assistant professor of theater arts. Scott met Bullen last summer during a course at RADA in London and recommended highly to Ron Wilson, chair of the theater arts department, that he invite Bullen to campus.

With support from the Friends of Eldred Theater and the College of Arts and Sciences, Bullen made the trans-Atlantic trip to Cleveland to offer the graduate students a different perspective on Shakespeare-gained from his more than 30 years of experience in theater education, community theater, adult education in the theatrical arts and teaching in professional training programs.

Bullen took time off this semester from his duties as the course director for Shakespeare in "Performance Programme," a joint RADA and New York University's Tisch School of the Arts Program, to come to CWRU. At RADA, he also directs the Stage Fighting Competition.

Among his other theater credits, Bullen has had a four-year appointment as associate director of Britain's longest-established school based program—Theatre Centre. This program uses theater as an educational tool to explore social issues within the context of the play to help children realize that potential solutions to social problems come in their own lives, attitudes and actions, according to Bullen.

While on campus, Bullen has had the class exploring Shakespeare's sonnets and "uncovering a series of psychological and dynamic signals" for clues as to how to translate the writings into a dynamic stage presence.

Since the sonnets were written with each line having an iambic pentameter as its basis, Bullen encouraged the students to find those lines where and how Shakespeare departs from this series of five metrical feet to make an emotional or psychological point, to create drama.

Bullen illustrates this in the well-known "To be or not to be..." soliloquy that contains a line with only four feet instead of the usual five; since this line has the words "Must give us pause." He explains that he felt that Shakespeare intended there to be a pause after the "pause."

And how to handle line ending, he states, "I think for me the juice is that the actor is free to do whatever they wish, but that often the performer hesitates for a moment, gathers resources and then continues."

And where Shakespeare might end the line with a conjunction and in normal speech one would continue straight on, but Bullen tells the actors to attempt to put them in Shakespeare's mind at the moment of writing and to re-enact that impulse. There is sometimes a split second between the lines of verse to allow for clarification and focus.

It leads to my whole big thing, and that is to put acting into the present tense and to make it happen to the audience in the here and now-and not become a delivery from an Olympian height."

This mindset does not come without its challenges for the actor who has less control, but—as Bullen advises—the students "must trust the verse."

Bullen's interest in the theater began early as he performed in school plays in Cornwall where he grew up and was the son of book shop manager. He auditioned and was accepted at the age of 15 for the Britain's London-based National Youth Theater, a summer workshop for talented youth.

Even as a youth, he wanted to be a stage manager and was fascinated by the backstage.

"I find that ironic now, because everything I try to do is to enlist audiences to participate in the play. Whenever I can, I will perform in the round-where there is no backstage," he says.

But he finds the theater lures him.

"Any theater building to me—whether it is old or new—has an element of attractive mystery about it," he adds.