The world increases, and kindreds are mightily strengthened

~by Lucretia Anderson In the olden days, families might sit around the parlor reading Shakespeare’s sonnets and plays together for the day’s entertainment. In 2012 we’re shaking it up! This past Saturday, Danielle Drakes and I had the privilege of working with an enthusiastic mix of 6-12 year olds and their parents in a workshop [...]

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Thou hast it now:

While there are many student Shakespeare Festivals all over the world, some teachers might feel trepidation at cutting, directing, casting, rehearsing and organizing a performance for their class. One of our SSO teaching artists, and long-time Docent of the Folger, Amy Thompson, has been doing that very process for the last few years at Nottingham Elementary [...]

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Experiencing Shakespeare: An Electronic Field Trip to the Folger Shakespeare Library

“Speak the speech, I pray you, … trippingly on the tongue,”  Hamlet’s advice to the players.     When teachers assign their students to perform a scene from a play by William Shakespeare, what should their students do to get ready?  How can teachers best support their students in preparing their scenes?  Steer them away from “translated” [...]

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Shakespeare Really Did Change My Life

Lucretia’s blog about how Shakespeare changed her life  has prompted me to write my own entry about how Shakespeare changed mine.  Like most students, I was introduced to Shakespeare in high school.  We studied Macbeth and had to memorize a passage from it to deliver in front of the class.  I still remember the passage [...]

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Macbeth Set Free

Folger Education entered  new territory on Tuesday February 15 with the beginning of Macbeth Set Free, an online course for teachers. With the help of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and New York Institute of Technology, we are able to reach teachers across the country with some solid approaches for teaching Shakespeare. [...]

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Shakespeare and comics?

~by Conor McCreery I’m pretty sure I know what you’re thinking; you’re thinking: FINALLY! Finally someone has put together a medium and a creative genius that work together even better than chocolate and peanut butter.  No, I’m not kidding. Shakespeare was always meant to be seen. His plays have a special mix of magic and [...]

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More Than Papier-Mâché Characters

~by Anthony Del Col The best Shakespeare production I’ve ever seen was also the worst. A friend of mine was doing a community theatre production of Titus Andronicus years ago and it was quite bad (with the exception of my friend, who may be reading this… oops!).  Bad acting, directing, sets, costumes and props (a [...]

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Online Courses

One of the things Folger Education has been working on this year is the development of an online course on MACBETH.  If you’ve ever taken an online course, what was your experience with it?  We plan to offer an eight-week course, meeting once each week for 90 minutes, starting in mid-February.  Would you be interested [...]

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What plays for a webinar?

Our recent webinar on Macbeth drew an overwhelming response from teachers across the country and around the world.  Within two and-a-half hours of posting the notice for it, all 150 available seats had been filled.  Another 245 teachers tried to register for the session.  Unfortunately, on the night of the webinar, only 73 of the [...]

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MACBETH Set Free Webinar

Folger Education, with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, will offer a free webinar on December 7th.  Don’t rush out to sign up because within three hours of posting a notice to our BardNotes subscribers all 150 available seats were filled.  We were excited by the response and surprised by the speed by [...]

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