Packer invited some of her assistants at Shakespeare & Co. to help with the VDP production. Professional directors, voice coaches and fight choreographers have helped train the cast, according to Joe C. Gfaller '01, who plays the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Ely and the Duke of Norfolk.

"The play becomes as much about the process as the final performance itself--so that along the way you feel as if you are working as much towards refining a craft as you are towards mounting a play," Gfaller says. When the play opens tonight, the audience will be treated to refined Shakespearean "lamentations" and a full-fledged battle scene.

But Shakespeare in particular is about the script itself, according to cast members, and Packer has emphasized the importance of focusing on the words. To this end, she used a technique called "dropping in," that was new to most cast members.

The technique comes into play before the actors have memorized their lines. Packer took their scripts and fed them the words slowly--even one at a time--while asking them questions about their characters. Cary P. McClelland '02, who is the show's assistant director along with Monica A. Henderson '99, says the technique means that actors memorize their lines along with mental associations that help them play their characters.

"You become very intimately involved with the text which makes it much easier to memorize lines because you've spent so much time with the words," Gfaller says. Dropping in pulls meaning out of the individual words instead of imposing meaning on them, he says.

"Dropping in was a trip," says Peter D. Richards '01, who plays Lord Hastings. "It really helped you get a hold of your character early on."

Several actors said that at times the process could be overwhelming since it demands so much of their own emotion. Frances C. Chang '00, who plays the Duchess of York, says she couldn't help crying the first time she tried "dropping in."

"It's very intense," says Benjamin L. Kornell '02, who plays Lord Stanley, the Earl of Derby. "It works very well for Shakespeare because Shakespeare is as much about the words themselves as about acting."