 Hi everyone, my name is Kim Douthit. Today we're gonna be talking about archetypes using Shakespeare. Now you don't need a whole lot of materials for this, mostly just you and yourself. If you wanna jot down notes, grab a writing utensil and some paper to write it on. Otherwise, the big thing is you're gonna need a little bit of space. So make sure that you have some room to navigate where you won't bump into a person, place or thing. We're gonna be dealing with a little bit of text but don't worry, the text will come up on the screen so you won't have to print anything out. It is always helpful with an activity like this to have another thing around that you can interact with. It might be a person, it might be a pet. When in doubt, just hold up a picture and that can be the thing that you interact with. Now Shakespeare deals in universal themes. His plots, the symbols, his characters, they're what we call archetypes. Symbols re-recognize as part of our collective human experience. So things like good versus evil, a character going on a journey, heroes and villains. We find them all over literature and our stories. The Marvel movies are full of archetypes. Star Wars, full of archetypes. What I wanna look at today is using archetypes to explore characters, specifically characters in Shakespeare. Now in this exercise, as we explore these characters, there's gonna be some speech that'll pop up on the screen. We're gonna be working with four main archetypes. These are not the only archetypes out there or the only archetypes in Shakespeare that are out there but they're some of the big ones. We're gonna create a physicality for each one and we're gonna move around a little with them. Now those are the sovereign, the warrior, the carer and the trickster. So first we need to be on our feet. So if you're not already standing, what are you waiting for? Stand up. We're gonna start with sovereign. Now what is a sovereign? It's a ruler. It might be a king or a queen, a president, a prime minister, the principal of the school, the CEO. They are very uprights. They have a lot of responsibility. Powerful postures. I want you to think of some sort of pose that conveys those. I'm gonna use one imagining I have a crown on my head and I have to hold this crown up. So again, you see it's very upright and strong. I'm gonna start to move around a little bit. And I want you to pay attention. How does this feel? How does this feel differently than your normal posture? Are you taking big steps, small steps? Are you moving very fast or slow? And something that's important to realize there's not a right or wrong answer. It's what you find during your exploration. And as you continue to move around in this posture, where are you looking? Are you straight ahead? Are you looking up? Are you looking down? If you were to encounter someone else, would you want to interact with them? Or not? And as you're moving around in this posture, I also want you to think what's one word that would convey this character? And as you move around a little, let's find ourselves back to ourselves. So shake off that first one. Ooh, that feels good. We're gonna look at our next one. And that is the warrior. What is a warrior? Could be someone in the military? In Shakespeare's time, you're looking at knights. It could be a policeman or police officer, a soldier. It's another one that has a very strong presence, right? In fact, you might feel some similarities to our sovereign. Now this is interesting because in Shakespeare, a lot of sovereigns were also warriors. Macbeth would become king, but he was also a soldier. King Henry V served in war, but he was also the king of the land. So this is one where there is some crossover between the two. Now for a warrior posture, again, we have that nice, strong posture. I'm gonna hold out my sword and protect my heart with my shield. And like before, let's find ourselves moving around and take note. Are you moving fast? Are you moving slow? Are you taking big steps, small steps? Where are you looking? Are you looking straight ahead? Are you looking up? Are you looking down? If you were to encounter someone, would you want to engage with them? How would you engage with them? Would you be aggressive? Would you be trusting or would you be suspicious? And as you move around a little bit more, take a few more steps and think about what's one word that would encompass this character? And then shake that off. Take a breath, find yourself back to yourself. Our next one is a little bit of contrast to our first two. This is the carer. This is a carer. That's somebody who takes care of others. It could be someone who works in healthcare, a doctor, a nurse. It might be a caretaker, a parent, a grandparent, someone you trust, maybe a teacher. They're nurturing, they're open, they want to help. Even their physicality is gonna be open. We'll explore that with our physicality. So, carer for me, opening up my arms, ready to embrace someone. And how does that feel? How is it different from our first two? For me, this one feels very different. And as we move around, again, are you moving slowly? Are you moving fast? There's not a right or wrong answer. Are you taking big steps? Do you want to look someone in the eye or look ahead? Look up, look down? If you were to encounter another, would you engage? How would you engage? And as you're moving around in your care posture, ask yourself what's one word? What's one word that would describe what I'm feeling and who this character is? Take another moment and then find yourself, fact yourself, shake that off. Take a breath. You're doing so good. We've got one more left. Our last one, it's one of my personal favorites. That's the trickster. Even saying the name, trickster, you feel like they're up to something. What is a trickster? Well, that's a clown. That could be in Shakespeare. We have a lot of fairies in Shakespeare who are very mischievous. It might be your younger brother. So we bring our posture down a little for this one. We make ourselves a little lower. We may have to sneak around. If we were to encounter someone, we would spin away because whatever we're doing, it's a little mischievous, right? So as we start to move around in our trickster posture, I can notice now, are you moving fast or slow? Are you taking big steps or small steps? Where are you looking? Are you looking around every corner? Are you looking up? Are you looking down? If you saw someone, would you want to engage? Or would you want to hide away? And as you're moving around in your trickster, think about one word. One word that shows how you're feeling. One word that encompasses that character. All right, let's shake that one off, take a breath. That was awesome. Now let's take a moment to reflect. How did that feel? Did you think of different characters while you were in some of those postures? Did you think about maybe public figures that popped into your head? Did you have any emotional responses? Were any of them really easy for you or felt very natural? Did some feel really hard or really unnatural in your body? Now we're gonna take those postures and those physicalities and we're gonna apply them to some text. So we're gonna have some lines and I want you to try saying these lines with each of our characters, with each of our physicalities. So our first line is, give me my armor and let's try it each way. We start with our sovereign and we say, give me my armor and then we try it with our warrior. Give me my armor and with our carer. Give me my armor and with the trickster. Give me my armor. Is there one that feels the most natural, one that seems to fit the best for you? For me, that one feels like a warrior. That's from the play Macbeth. But it could also be sovereign, you're demanding. The word armor though to me, that kinda clues in that you're probably dealing with a warrior. This next line is from a Midsummer Night's Dream and it is, Lord what fools these mortals be. So now try that line first as our sovereign and then as our warrior. And then the carer and finally the trickster. How did that feel? Which one felt the most natural to you? That could be sovereign. You're saying what fools these mortals be. That could also be trickster, right? What fools these mortals be. Now our next line is from Romeo and Juliet's, I love thee better than thou canst devise. So we should know these by now. Let's try that as our sovereign, as our warrior, as our carer, and as our trickster. This one for me is very obviously a carer. You don't see a lot of the warriors talking about love in Shakespeare's plays, but again, it's subjective. See how it felt for you. Let's do one last one. The line is courage man, the hurt cannot be much. So try to get first as our sovereign, as our warrior, as our carer, and our trickster. What felt the most natural? This one's really interesting for me because you can make it work with almost any of those characters, right? Now this exercise further illustrates there's not one right way to approach any of these characters or any kind of art. We all take our own experiences and interpretations and I think that's really, really exciting. It gives you lots of different ways you can view a story and view a character and it gives you a way to explore things and maybe bring some new perspective to something. Another thing to be thinking about, what are the shadows of these characters? The darker side, because for every sovereign, you have a tyrant, a warrior can become an aggressor, a carer can become a manipulator and a trickster can easily become a psychopath. So there's darker shades, there's a flip side to all of these archetypes and knowing this helps us analyze the characters even more. As you look at your favorite books, your favorite movies and TV shows, look for these archetypes because I'll bet as you start noticing them, you're gonna see them all over the place. Thank you all for playing around a little bit with me today with some words and some poses and some Shakespeare. Again, my name is Kim Douthit and I hope you have a fabulous rest of your day.