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    Exit Pursued by a Badger: An Actor's Journey through History with Shakespeare: An Actor's Journey Through History with Shakespeare
    Unavailable
    Exit Pursued by a Badger: An Actor's Journey through History with Shakespeare: An Actor's Journey Through History with Shakespeare
    Unavailable
    Exit Pursued by a Badger: An Actor's Journey through History with Shakespeare: An Actor's Journey Through History with Shakespeare
    Ebook234 pages2 hours

    Exit Pursued by a Badger: An Actor's Journey through History with Shakespeare: An Actor's Journey Through History with Shakespeare

    By Nick Asbury

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    We are engaged in performing four shows by night and restaging four different shows by day. And restaging all the understudy work as well. This is a lot of work. And my mind has turned to slush.


    Nick Asbury was in the ensemble from the Royal Shakespeare Company who, over the course of two and a half years, performed eight history plays by Shakespeare in repertory, beginning with the overthrow of Richard II and ending with the death of Richard III: a sequence of productions both critically acclaimed and watched by over 250,000 people. To keep a record of his involvement in this extraordinary and ambitious project, Nick wrote a Blog which was posted on the RSC website. This in turn became a massive success, regularly notching up 6,000 hits a week from avid followers around the world. Through Nick's engaging, observant, often hilarious words, we experience the camaraderie of actors, the terror of forgetting lines, technical difficulties, money problems, finding strange things in the bath, thirty-three broadsword fights and, and, of course, the ever-present threat of being assaulted by demented badgers after a performance.


    Nominated as one of 'Six Inspiring Biographies or Memoirs Every Actor Should Read' by Drama Bookshop New York, this really is a must have book for all actors and theatre fans.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOberon Books
    Release dateJun 22, 2009
    ISBN9781849436830
    Unavailable
    Exit Pursued by a Badger: An Actor's Journey through History with Shakespeare: An Actor's Journey Through History with Shakespeare

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    Reviews for Exit Pursued by a Badger

    3.5/5

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    • 3/5
      I should open this review by saying that I'm about to give a decidedly mixed reaction to "Exit Pursued by a Badger", so I want readers to be aware that this is based solely on what I thought the book was, and shouldn't be seen as a negative response to Nick Asbury or his insights here.

      Had I been aware of Asbury's blog in 2007, I would have been one of its most voracious readers. I'm a performer with a strong interest in Elizabethan texts, and to experience a working environment like that of the RSC Histories cycle would be a dream come true. Reading this book is full of warm moments of recognition and empathy, and interesting little factoids. The best elements are those with a feeling of specificity. Whereas a bog-standard actor's biography might gloss over the more "informative" parts of a tech rehearsal, Asbury gives us a cute scene of actors stuck below trapdoors for hours on end, gradually devolving into schoolchildren after lights out. It's neat.

      At the same time, I can't help but being disappointed that this book is - very literally - a blog printed in book form. We are deprived of real insights into the two-dozen actors involved in the project, nor do we get interviews or words from the dedicated crew and creative team. We don't get to explore in gritty detail what it's like to audition for the RSC, to work with them as a company. We also don't get - more disappointingly - much insight into character creation, work with the text, and interaction during rehearsal. Again, I realise that isn't the point of the book, but I feel as if what the RSC has published should have stayed in blog form.

      Ultimately, the Histories cycle was a unique experience, and I am saddened to find that I won't really learn much that is new. Indeed, as a performer, there was very little insight or surprises in it for me, even if Asbury's prose was consistently entertaining. On the other hand, though, I'm not sure a neophyte would take all that much away from the books either - while the language is not overly technical, the brevity of each post brings with it a sort of "insiders" feel about the experience. Play names, characters, and general atmospheres are conveyed in broad strokes which would probably not interest a lot of non-theatre people.

      In short, I'm not completely sure who this book is aimed at. I certainly would have liked to get much more insight into an incredible experience. And, conversely, I would still like to praise Asbury for what he DID capture: that feeling of passion and dedication that we give to our craft; the clearly-written, wryly phrased anecdotes about cast members drying or occasionally losing their nerve. While the book was not what I wanted it to be, I was still enthralled by the halfway point, and happy to be on a journey with actors doing their job because they love it. That much, at least, is a blessing.