The Classical Gym is a safe, low-pressure space for actors to explore the intense, high-stakes worlds of Shakespeare.

We focus on skills for handling heightened text; immense circumstances; structural, tonal and thematic complexity; and even obscure period details.

Quick Resources:

Shakespeare’s Words — complete works, relationship diagrams, searchable glossary, and more

A quick guide to scansion and meter in verse

Video introduction to iambic pentameter from RSC Learning Zone

Common rhetorical and literary devices in the plays

Silva Rhetoricae — deep dive on classical and renaissance rhetoric

Play Shakespeare — various resources, including doubling charts

Isaac Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare, Volume One and Volume Two

Bodleian First Folio — The First Folio, fully digitized

MIT Shakespeare — complete works in html plaintext format

About the instructor:

Tim Eliot got his BA with Distinction in Theater Studies from Yale, where he led the Undergraduate Shakespeare Company for three years; he got an MFA in Acting from the Moscow Art Theater / American Repertory Theater Institute at Harvard (where he studied with David Hammond, who later directed his first Hamlet); studied three years with Bill Esper at the Esper Studio; and took every level of on-camera class with Bob Krakower. He has 25 years of experience in classical work and credits across theater, TV, and film. Tim teaches Understanding Story at NYU, has run several classical workshops, and teaches acting and academics privately. He is a founding company member and the Managing Director of Krymov Lab NYC, producing and acting across four seasons in residency at La MaMa. He has played Hamlet twice (most recently in a church space in Brooklyn), MacBeth, Romeo, Posthumous, Tamora, Claudio (also twice), Octavius, and Florizel; directed Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, and Merchant of Venice; and created a series of dramaturgical video essays called Full Contact Shakespeare (@fullcontactshakes).