Shakespeare the Player

Last night, I sat in on the first preview for Folger Theatre’s new production of Twelfth Night. The romantic, knotty nature of the play was brought out in the production, and I, along with the rest of the very packed house, found myself enjoying the whole play anew. And then Feste (for not many companies cast a Fabian if they don’t have to) uttered one of my favorite lines in this play:

“If this were played upon a stage now, I could 
condemn it as an improbable fiction.”

It’s just such a wonderful, inclusive, self-aware joke. And because I’ve seen him so often in these self-aware parts, Louis Butelli has become my face of Will Shakespeare for the present, and I can almost see him creating that line 400+ years ago.

Mike LoMonico has said, and it’s true, that it’s not necessary to teach a biographical background in order to teach Shakespeare’s plays. You don’t need to know about Elizabethan life or stage practices to enjoy and explore the text, though instances for dropping in facts as they come up do arise. As a sometimes actor, I love finding these moments of player-hood in the text. This line in Twelfth Night, Hamlet’s speech to the tragedians, Henry V‘s apologetic Chorus, and – most especially dear to my heart – all of the mechanicals’ scenes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

I’ve made it no secret that these terrible rustic actors are my favorites in the whole canon. Each festival season I fervently pray to see as many renditions of this play-within-a-play as there are schools to perform it. I even tried to get my wedding party to perform Pyramus and Thisbe at my wedding (they talked me down from that ledge). I love these players for throwing themselves whole-heartedly into their art, and committing to it despite lacking talent and means.

Students perform Pyramus and Thisbe during the 2009 Secondary Festival at the Folger

Recently, Carol Ann and I were left in charge of another school visit, and having discussed our mutual appreciation for Quince’s ragtag team, and Mike’s suggestion of dropping in facts as they came up, we decided to test out an activity for the students that combined Shakespeare’s Text with some player background, discussion, and history- to try to paint a larger picture, so to speak, as they came up in the mechanicals’ scenes in Midsummer. After a brief introduction to what an Elizabethan Theatre would have felt like, we used clips from the following scenes:

Act 1, Scene 2

(line 11) Quince tells his assembly what play they will produce: “The most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe.” What kind of play does an audience want to see? What does this title make you think of?

(line 20) Quince assigns the roles in the play. Bottom asks if Pyramus is “a lover or a tyrant?” You were likely to see many plays about kings and lovers much of the time. Try to pick out Shakespeare’s plays that aren’t about either subject, how many do you have?

(line 45) Francis Flute protests playing a woman – on the Elizabethan stage, women’s roles were played by young men and boys.

(line 75) Why are the players concerned about the Lion being too frightening? What could happen to you if your play displeased the monarch at the time? The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, Shakespeare’s company, were once in danger of their lives when Queen Elizabeth I saw herself in the deposed monarch in Shakespeare’s play Richard II.

Act 3, Scene 1

(line 9) Bottom is concerned that their play is too violent. Can we relate to that today? Who in the audience is he most concerned about? What solution does he propose?

(line 46) During their rehearsal, Quince says that he hopes to have the moon shining on the night of their performance because “Pyramus and Thisbe meet by moonlight.” Is it actually necessary for the moon to be out for the play to be believable? What devices did Shakespeare have available to him to set the scene (ie: Merchant 5, 1; Midsummer 3, 2, 190)?

(line 61) Quince also points out the need for a wall for the lovers to whisper through. What is their solution. How would you solve this issue?

(line 90) Flute speaks all his lines at once. In the 16th century, actors learned their lines from “sides” – papers that contained their lines only, and maybe a cue or two.

Act 5, Scene 1

(line 134) The mechanicals’ play begins with a Prologue. Where else have you seen a Prologue, and what is its function?

(line 179) “O, grim-looked night!…” the O encompasses all of the emotion of the line (ie: “O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!”) What emotion is Bottom/Pyramus playing here with all of these many many O’s? This part is especially fun for the best over-actor in the class.

Students perform Pyramus and Thisbe during the 2009 Secondary Festival at the Folger

(line 260) Throughout the play, the married couples add their own comments and interjections. Live theatre includes a live audience with live reactions. In Elizabethan England, nobles attended plays as much to be seen as to see. Sometimes there were seats onstage for them to show off their latest finery, and there’s a legend that Queen Elizabeth I once crossed the stage mid-performance to greet someone. The groundlings had no problem voicing their reactions during the play, either. Have you ever experienced something like that today?

(line 291) Even more fun – bad rhymes and stage deaths for Pyramus and Thisbe! Did the audience enjoy the play?

All-told, this portion of the activity took about 45 minutes, and we had a wonderful group of 8th grade students acting it out for us! At the end, we asked them to share anything they would take away from this, one student said, “You really had to use your imagination back then – it was all about the words and the actor.”

Not a bad takeaway.

Read Full Post »

“there was a star danced, and under that was I born.”

Today is William Shakespeare’s 449th Birthday. Though he’s not here to celebrate with us, we enjoy celebrating him! This afternoon we’re hosting our second Electronic Field Trip in which students explore Shakespeare’s language up on their feet!

Our good friend and contributor, Holly Rodgers, and her ESL/ELL class celebrated by writing sonnets inspired by their favorite season, and a few examples are included below. How are you celebrating?

Summer Sights
By Anh Tran

Summer is here, how lovely days play out
side in the hot day play ball at the beach.
Eat ice cream on a hot day, play and shout
all day. My favorite ice cream’s mango peach.

And apple picking will be fun for one.
The summer day, I got no rules to break
or follow, but with my family have fun.
Make a cake and make a milk shake, fun take!

A break from all that homework is so great.
Summer homework is just to have some fun.
To the pool, swim, eat pizza on my plate.
Look at the sky, the clouds I see, and sun.

Can name the different clouds up in the sky.
Still see them without looking with my eye.

Summer Friend
By Hannah Tijani

A summer day is great for outdoor play.
It’s fun to go play with a big, beach ball.
I hit with my hands then I like to lay
upon the sand, then I go to the mall.

I also like to play upon the swings.
Sometimes I pump and kick my legs so high.
Feel that I almost touch the cloudy rings
of wispy puffs of cotton in the sky.

I like to go swimming at my own pool.
Sometimes I see my friends who go there, too.
The water feels so good on my skin, cool
like ice that’s melting into liquid blue.

I wish that summer didn’t have to end.
My favorite season is my best friend.

Summer Stage
By Rosana Ayala

Hot days need ice cream to go play with friends.
We sing and dance and have a lot of fun.
Chocolate and strawberry love to blend
in my mouth as to my stomach they run.

I go to the beach on hot summer days.
I play soccer on summer days with friends.
I go to pools with my sis and do plays
for my family our acting up ascends.

I like to eat mangoes on summer days.
It’s fun to let the juice drip from my lips.
I like to entertain others amaze
them with my talents like shaking my hips.

Like those Hawaiian hula dancers do.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll go to the zoo.

Read Full Post »

Shakespeare: Gateway Literature

~by Holly Rodgers

The benefit of exposing students to Shakespeare is paramount to establishing strong literary foundations in the classroom, for all learners, regardless of age and academic abilities.  While I could give testimony of the many advantages to be gained by doing so, I would like to focus on one in particular, the ability of Shakespeare to serve as a metaphorical gateway drug to get students addicted to reading. While I had known that allowing my young ELL (English Language Learner) students to participate in performance-based Shakespeare study would improve their developing language skills, and perhaps make them more critical evaluators of what they read; I had underestimated the stepping stone Shakespeare could provide to gain access to other challenging works of literature.

My 5^th and 6^th grade ELL students had spent the first nine-weeks of the school year studying Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  While they were enjoying working with the plays, they also began to complain that they missed reading novels.  They wanted something “hard” to challenge them, but I was struggling to find them something that would segue nicely from Shakespeare.  Due to the extensive fantasy worlds woven into the plays my students had studied, I felt the mythology and adventure of J.R.R. Tolkien would suit them well.

We proceeded to read The Hobbit during the month of December and I soon became aware of how well-prepared my students were for the challenging vocabulary, complex plot lines, and colorful characters, which are all signature trademarks of Shakespeare’s works.  While my students were unconvinced that they would ever find another writer  they would worship at the feet of like Master Will, they quickly grew to love Tolkien and reading about the adventures of Bilbo Baggins and his band of dwarves.  Many of the themes and motifs present in the plays we studied were also found in the fantasy world of Middle-Earth.  My students had no difficulty accepting the existence of fantastical creatures such as dragons, dwarves, hobbits, wizards, and elves when they had already been exposed to fairies, witches, and ghosts in MSND, Macbeth, and Hamlet.  The rhythm of Tolkien’s language also required their ears to acclimate, as was also necessary to establishing the beat of iambic-pentameter.  Challenging vocabulary was not intimidating to them as Shakespeare had taught them to have no fear of unknown words.

While Shakespeare will always be their first love, my students are learning that their relationship with The Bard is not exclusive.  There are many great writers out there worth reading and I believe that Shakespeare has given my students the courage to tackle each one with no trepidation.  Always up for a challenge, my students have now chosen to take on a new literary task.  They are attempting to read the entire Lord of the Rings by the end of the school year.  For those of you who would like to follow along with our progress, we are chronicling our reading adventures on our recently-founded blog Teaching Tolkien.   My students are completely hooked on reading and for that, I am eternally grateful, Master Shakespeare.

Holly Rodgers is an elementary school ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) teacher in Fairfax County, Virginia.  She has been a presenter at the Folger Elementary Educators Conference and has created ELL (English Language Learner) and elementary focused lesson plans for the Folger Education Website. She has spent her varied educational career as both a language and music teacher.  She earned her M Ed in Multilingual/Multicultural Education from George Mason University and her BME in Instrumental Music from Louisiana State University.

Keep the conversation going with Holly on Twitter @hmrodgers

Read Full Post »

Action is Eloquence

~ by Danette Long

I recently had the pleasure of working with 20 pre-service English teachers at Montana State University in beautiful Bozeman, MT.  My purpose for working with the students was to discuss methods for teaching Shakespeare in secondary education.  I should begin by saying that this is a topic near and dear to my heart because I had no idea how to teach Shakespeare to high school students for the six years I taught English in Northern New York.  I wished dearly at the time that I had someone to enlighten me about teaching Shakespeare in a way that would actively engage my students.

I began my time as guest lecturer by asking Montana’s future English teachers to free write about their biggest fear relating to teaching Shakespeare.  There were many variations, but the responses boiled down to five big fears:

1. Lack of student engagement or general boredom with Shakespeare
2. Inadequacy in interpreting Shakespeare’s language for students
3. A personal lack of expertise regarding all things Shakespeare
4. A personal lack of enthusiasm for Shakespeare and his work (It seems not all English majors love Shakespeare—imagine my surprise!)
5. What to acknowledge or leave out, particularly regarding Shakespeare’s bawdy.

Anyone with experience in Folger philosophy will know that I could not have asked for a better set up to the next three days as I walked these students through several Folger activities.  The magic began as soon as I opened the lid of the Shakespeare Set Free Toolkit and we pushed the classroom chairs to the wall for:

in such business
Action is eloquence, and the eyes of th’ ignorant
More learned than the ears
(Coriolanus, III.ii)

While teaching performance-based approaches to Shakespeare’s texts to Twenty-First Century English teachers is hardly what Volumnia was trying to convey to her son in Coriolanus, the words are certainly applicable.  After all, it is one thing to tell someone something; we do this with our students all the time.   We tell them that they should use performance to teach Shakespeare.  It is another to show them, lists of resources that address performance are often mentioned in English methods courses.  But when you have them do it, practice it, teach it for themselves, well then, you have something altogether more powerful…

We began by discussing Edward Rocklin’s idea of reading “as investigators” in his text Performance Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare.  Specifically to go beyond the traditional ideas of identifying and discussing what the words in a text might mean, but to delve deeper and ask, “what do these words do?”, “what can these words be made to do?” and most powerfully, “what do these words make an actor make the audience do?”  These are heady questions to pose when teaching Shakespeare.  Taken together they bring out the important fact that Shakespeare’s texts are plays full of action, not static words pinned to the page.

We then investigated tone, stress, and subtext in language.  If you have attended a Folger Act I workshop at NCTE, you recognize the focus.  (If you haven’t had the pleasure, I suggest you mark the session in next year’s catalog).  Then we moved into some ice breakers with insults and compliments and 2-line scene cards, exploring the magic of the Shakespeare Set Free Toolkit.

The investigation of Shakespeare continued with a close reading of Othello’s Act II, scene i using Michael Tolaydo’s “Up on Your Feet with Shakespeare” found in Volume 3 of Shakespeare Set Free.  As we read, reread, discussed and debated the text, the students wrote notes on the board to support their investigation of who the characters in the scene were, the relation between the characters, the location of the scene, and what the characters were doing.  The students were amazed at how easily they understood what was going on in the text without having had any background for the play provided.  The level of close reading brought on by performing the lines was far greater than any read-from-your-seat analysis they had experienced in their own Shakespeare instruction.

Before I set them to the task of teaching their own performance-based lessons I shared one of the 15 minute plays from the Toolkit’s zip drive.  The students couldn’t stop talking about the applications for the 15 minute Henry IV, part I.  We discussed how easy it would be for them to recreate the 15 minute process with any play they would teach to their students.  (Many students shared that this was one of their favorites from the three-day workshop).

Finally, I put the students in groups to do the most important work of all: teach a Shakespeare lesson through performance to their peers.  Students worked in groups of 5 to prepare a performance-based lesson from the Twelfth Night Unit Calendar also found in Volume 3 of Shakespeare Set Free.  Each group had their own lesson to teach to the class.  In my opinion, this practice was the most meaningful exercise I could have students do for it is when we do a task ourselves that we achieve the confidence to repeat the process.  It is not enough to tell our future teachers to use performance; it is not enough to show them performance; if they are to have the confidence to use performance in their own classrooms with their own students, our pre-service students must experience the performance for themselves and they must be given the opportunity to teach through performance.

At the end of our last day I reminded the students of their 5 big fears and asked them to write once again, only this time I asked them to share how the workshop had helped alleviate those fears.  Here is what they said:

“This workshop has helped to alleviate these fears because I was able to act as the student and the teacher.”

“These different methods do not allow students to be un-engaged.  They have to participate, pay attention, and contribute.”

“I think the experience has helped me get some new perspectives on Shakespeare.”

“Shakespeare’s language no longer seems so impenetrable…Students are imbuing words in the play with meaning, I’m not doing that for them.”

“By putting students in the center of the text through performance, they will grasp key moments and details.”

“Introducing performance-based activities does a lot of the interpretive grunt work for the teacher because the students move into the close reader role more easily, often without realizing it.”

“Before, I did not feel like enough of an expert on Shakespeare to teach my students…but now I realize I can collaborate and learn along with my students…”

“I also feel as though I can approach teaching Shakespeare with energy as opposed to dread.”

“The one main aspect of this workshop I felt to be most beneficial was getting us on our feet and actively participating…”

“To be honest, I am much more excited to teach Shakespeare in my classroom.”

As for me, my love of all things Shakespeare grows with every new experience.  I will continue to make Shakespeare three-dimensional for any student in any classroom where I am lucky enough to be a part.

After teaching high school English for six years in Northern New York, Danette moved to Bozeman, MT where she is currently a Pre-Service Practicum Instructor and Supervisor of Teacher Candidates at Montana State University in Bozeman, MT.  She is an alumnus of the Folger TSI 2010 and had the honor of presenting in a Folger strand at NCTE 2011.  She earned her Master of Arts in English at Montana State University and her Master of Science in Teaching English from SUNY Potsdam in Potsdam, NY.  Though her friends think she may be crazy, she soon intends to pursue an Ed.D in Education.

Read Full Post »

Play, Play, Play

~by Kevin J. Costa

Sometimes I wonder if the performance-based approach to teaching Shakespeare, which we promote at the Folger, is seen only as an “entry-level” tool for students and teachers intimidated by Shakespeare. For sure, this is a major audience. But performance-based work on Shakespeare doesn’t have to stop there. In fact, I think it shouldn’t. What does a performance-based approach do for that (growing) group of students who are already in “the choir,” so-to-speak?

Two students of mine at McDonogh School offer an example. We’ve been studying Twelfth Night for some time, and we are preparing for a night of one-act performances from the play. These students are playing Orsino and Viola/Cesario in Act 2, Scene 4 — the moment when, for the first time, Orsino seems to take interest in someone other than himself. From the start of the play, Orsino tends to hold court, sharing his convictions about how the world of love works — an armchair expert, but, because he’s the Duke, the one with the bully pulpit. Cesario, however, has a knack of throwing people off their game whether emotionally, rhetorically, or both. “How dost thou like this tune?” asks Orsino in Act 2, Scene 4, and Cesario responds, “It gives a very echo to the seat / Where love is throned” (2.4.23-25). Orsino responds,

Thou dost speak masterly.
My life upon’t, young though thou art, thine eye
Hath stayed upon some favor that it loves.
Hath it not, boy? (2.4.25-28)

Orsino’s interest in Cesario, noted by Valentine at the outset of Act 1, Scene 4, only deepens here. Yes, Orsino still characteristically holds forth with declarations about the truths of love, but we see an increase in the number of questions he asks Cesario — a suggestion that he, for once, isn’t only thinking of himself:

Twelfth night, act 1, scene 4 by H. Thomas Maybank. Folger Shakespeare Library.

ORSINO
Make no compare
Between that love a woman can bear me
And that I owe Olivia.

VIOLA
Ay, but I know –

ORSINO
What dost thou know?

VIOLA
Too well what love women to men may owe.
In faith, they are as true of heart as we.
My father had a daughter loved a man
As it might be, perhaps, were I a woman,
I should your Lordship.

ORSINO
And what’s her history?

VIOLA
A blank, my lord. She never told her love [. . .]

ORSINO
But died thy sister of her love, my boy?

VIOLA
I am all the daughters of my father’s house,
And all the brothers, too — and yet I know not.
Sir, shall I to this lady?

ORSINO
Ay, that’s the theme.
To her in haste. Give her this jewel. Say
My love can give no place, bide no denay. (2.4.111-122, 131-37)

It’s refreshing to see Orsino concerned about someone else who might be in love. Sure, love is his occupation and so it’s no surprise that he’d take interest, but this is one of the first times he seems to realize that other people might know what it is to have such strong feelings.

At the end of a recent class, my two students stopped me with a question about these final lines. “Mr. Costa,” they said, “does Orsino want to give a ring to the sister of Cesario?” They were confused, of course, because they know that person doesn’t exist in the play. Still, they thought that Orsino (who, unlike the audience, doesn’t know this) wanted to give the ring to Cesario’s sister. I said we should look closely at the text again, and we discussed how Cesario’s line, “Sir, shall I to this lady?” redirects the moment to the “theme” at hand:  i.e., Olivia. And then one of my students said, “Well, should we change the word ‘lady’ to ‘Olivia’ so that the audience gets it?” I told them I didn’t think it at all necessary; in performance, I insisted, the redirect would be quite clear if the person playing Cesario shakes him/herself out of the increasingly intimate dialogue he/she has with Orsino and gets back to the original business at hand.

Students perform Twelfth Night in the 2011 Secondary Schools Festival. Photo by Duy Tran.

This experience confirmed something in a very concrete way for me about how playing Shakespeare is the most rigorous, specific work a person can do with these texts.  What my students experienced as “confusion” in this extraordinary moment in Twelfth Night was actually the discovery of something at the heart of this play — ambiguity: the ambiguity of language, the ambiguity of feelings, the ambiguity of sexual identity. Who, indeed, is this lady to whom Cesario and Orsino refer? Well, sure it’s Olivia. But the reference to “this lady” by Cesario followed two lines later by Orsino’s, “to her in haste” occurs so quickly that we might well be confused by the referent of these two pronouns. And, one might really wonder, at this moment, who really is the object of Orsino’s emotional energy. Olivia seems to have fallen off his radar, if just for a moment, only to be replaced by the image of Cesario’s “sister” with whom he grows increasingly interested. And if Cesario, as we’ll see, is mistaken as her twin, Sebastian, later in the play, then that means Cesario’s “sister” is, in a strangely logical way — you guessed it — Viola. And we all know who Orsino ends up with at the end of this play!

Confusing? Complicated? Ambiguous? Yes to all of the above. We wrapped up our conversation with a thought: yes, this ambiguity might be apparent to the student sitting at her desk reading quietly, but I can’t imagine that it would have caused us to debate this complex emotional and linguistic tangle in such a lively, enthusiastic, and very rigorous way if they weren’t playing it. What’s more, I had precious little to do with this big question that they had formed – it was their discovery. I just jumped into a problem that had already captured their intellect and imagination and became a partner in their work.

To tell you the truth, I’m not sure I’d have alighted on the ambiguity of these pronouns if I were just lecturing because, for better or for worse, I’m too familiar with the play. Fresh eyes, however, can discover so much that routine ignores. I guess the point is that playing Shakespeare isn’t just a gimmick to lure the frightened; it is, rather, a profound tool that sharpens one’s critical acumen further with each successive use.

Kevin J. Costa is a TSI 2010 Alumni. In addition to being an English teacher at McDonogh School, he is Director of the school’s Institute for Shakespeare and Renaissance Studies, Head of the Drama Department, and Director of Fine & Performing Arts. He also serves as the Director of Education for the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company and is former Chair of the Shakespeare Theater Association’s Education Committee.

Read Full Post »

“You Shall Piece it Out With a Piece of Your Performance”

There are parts of my middle school English curriculum that I find to be really boring to teach.  For example: grammar.  Don’t get me wrong – I’m as much a geek for grammar as the next – but teaching it can be a drag… explaining rules, drilling through sentences, fighting the wavering attention spans…

When I’m feeling bored with teaching a grammar skill or literary concept, here’s my solution: I decide not to teach it.

So to speak.

Instead, I go hunting through my Complete Works of Shakespeare, revisiting scenes that I’ve enjoyed, until I find a little section or excerpt that can somehow dovetail with the concept that my students need to learn.  I let Shakespeare teach the skill.  It’s much more interesting to introduce a skill or concept when it emerges from something alive and active, like a mini-scene that my students have puzzled through.

I’ll give you an example.

I had to teach my students about appositives, those nouny-phrases that clarify another noun and which are usually set off by commas.  I thought about lecturing and using overheads and passing out worksheets, but that whole process just seemed so dull.  I started thinking about what an appositive phrase feels like when it’s spoken.  The whole idea of an appositive as “extra information” made me think of Shakespeare’s asides – extra information that helps clarify things for the audience.

So I doctored up a short excerpt from Othello, act 5, scene 1, which ends with Iago’s aside, “This is the night / That either makes me or fordoes me quite.”  The catch was that I had secretly deleted the stage direction “Aside” when Iago speaks.  Then I passed the excerpt out to my students and had them work through it, swapping out actors and directors pretty frequently, ensuring that everyone stayed involved one way or another.

Eventually, some of them started to wonder why Iago would announce his scheming to the other characters.  (It took willpower for me to not vocalize that observation myself!)  The actor then tried giving that line with a cupped hand around his mouth, whispering the line to the audience.  Voilà – they’d figured out the concept of the aside.  From there, it was straightforward to dramatize some sentences with appositives, inserting cupped-hands for commas.  And since the students owned the discovery of the aside, the corresponding grammar concept clicked more fully for them.

After that experience, I kept trying to link Shakespeare with other parts of the curriculum, such as literacy skills.  My 7^th graders were having a hard time making the leap from reading things literally to considering ideas about symbolism and metaphor.  We weren’t doing anything complex about Jay Gatsby’s optometrist or a piggy head on a spike; I just needed to get them to recognize the basic concept that sometimes, Thing A can represent Thing B.

What’s a scene in Shakespeare where one thing really, clearly stands for something else – a scene where the characters themselves are exploring symbolism?  After a little thought and browsing, I settled on a scene from Titus Andronicus.  (Yes, I can now say that I’ve done Titus with 12-year-olds.  Score!)  The titular character berates his brother for killing a fly, but then changes his mind when he envisions the fly as a symbol for the villain Aaron.  I introduced the scene to my students, telling them that Titus’s children had recently been murdered, raped, and/or mutilated (use your discretion.)  Also, I cut some lines from the scene in order to create a quicker dynamic that I thought would help my students recognize the change that Titus undergoes:

Titus Andronicus.
What dost thou strike at, Marcus, with thy knife?

Marcus Andronicus.
At that that I have kill’d, my lord; a fly.

Titus Andronicus.
Out on thee, murderer! thou kill’st my heart;
A deed of death done on the innocent
Becomes not Titus’ brother: get thee gone.

Marcus Andronicus.
Alas, my lord, I have but kill’d a fly.

Titus Andronicus.
But how, if that fly had a father and mother?
Poor harmless fly,
That, with his pretty buzzing melody,
Came here to make us merry! and thou hast
kill’d him.

Marcus Andronicus.
Pardon me, sir; it was a black ill-favor’d fly,
Like to the empress’ Moor; therefore I kill’d him.

Titus Andronicus.
O, O, O,
Then pardon me for reprehending thee,
For thou hast done a charitable deed.
Give me thy knife, I will insult on him;
Flattering myself, as if it were the Moor
Come hither purposely to poison me.—
There’s for thyself, and that’s for Tamora.

Some of my students acted and others directed.  Then we switched roles and they made some changes in the staging, movement, articulation, etc.  Then we switched roles again.  Gradually, the kids started emphasizing different emotional styles and actions to accompany the text.  I asked guiding questions: “Why does Titus pity the dead fly? … What does it remind him of? … Why does he stab the fly?”

Pretty soon, the students were talking about how the fly comes to stand for so much more within this little scene, changing from an innocent creature into a symbol for Aaron.  The actors hammed it up, taking out their aggression on the little wad of paper that they had dubbed “Fly,” as if they saw the villain himself in it.  After that, we returned to the Steinbeck novella that I’d been teaching, and the students could see that the protagonist’s pearl evolves to symbolize so much more than just a financial windfall.

Now although I love teaching whole Shakespeare units, nobody ever said that you can’t teach his work in bits and pieces like this.  (Or if someone did, then that person is wrong.)  When I give my students a Shakespeare scene, the onus is on them to figure out how to make sense of the language and the staging.  And when it’s paired up with another skill, then the students’ ownership of the scene transfers to that skill.  They learn the nitty-gritties of their English curriculum, and I get to have more fun.  Pretty cool combo.

Geoff Stanbury teaches 7^th grade humanities at St. Mark’s School of Texas in Dallas.  He is an alumnus of TSI 2010, where his passion for Shakespeare flourished through collaboration with talented colleagues and friends.  Geoff earned his B.A. at Sarah Lawrence College and his M.A. at the University of Chicago.  Feel free to contact him at stanburyg@smtexas.org.

Read Full Post »

The Bard is Alive and Well

Ben Jonson once wrote of Shakespeare, “He was not of an age, but for all time.”  Now, almost 400 years after Shakespeare’s death, we live in a world where it gets more difficult every day to convince students of the Bard’s relevance. Cell phones, iPads, and video games seem to have taken center stage in the common teenager’s life.  Is it really as difficult as some suggest to engage today’s student in the study of Shakespeare and his play?  I would argue that Shakespeare is doing just fine in 2013.  In a recent Folger Education Facebook entry, there was a link posted about seven upcoming film or television projects that all involved Shakespeare.  PBS recently began their six episode series entitled “Shakespeare Uncovered” and the first episode examined my all time favorite play, Macbeth.  As someone who feels they have a strong grasp of the play, I was fascinated at all the little insights I gained from watching this episode.  It was especially thrilling for me to see Dunsinane Hill and possibly the remnants of Birnam Wood in the surrounding countryside. As I watched, I was already plotting which clips from the show I wanted to share with my students next year when we study Macbeth.

In addition, I am amazed at how many newspaper and magazine headlines, syndicated columnists, and television shows make references to the Bard’s works.  One recent example that comes to mind was an opinion piece about the US tax code and how it relates to Shakespeare.  On television, CBS’s The Mentalist had two episodes from 2012 where Shakespeare had a major role in the outcome of the show. In the episode, “Something’s Rotten in Redmund” the lead character Patrick Jane investigates a teacher’s death by hanging around rehearsals of Hamlet.  By the end of the episode, Jane is on stage playing the ghost of Hamlet’s father and let’s just say that this ghost has other things to reveal than a usurping uncle. In another episode, “Cheap Burgundy,” Jane catches a killer by misquoting lines from Macbeth that the killer supposedly knew nothing about, but who felt the need to correct Jane’s mistake.  In this week’s Sports Illustrated, there is a college basketball article by Luke Winn entitled “Cry Havoc and Let Slip the Dogs of Hoops.”  I love seeing references to Julius Caesar in my favorite sports magazine.

While this was a long-winded introduction to what I want to share, I think it is important that students be shown the numerous examples of how the Bard’s works are alive and well in the 21st Century.   With that said, I also think that, we as educators, need to embrace the technology of today and also get the students out of their desks and experience the plays on their feet.  In this blog, I would like to share two of the activities that I have done in my classroom over the past three years to make the Bard come alive and allow the students to use a plethora of the technology that they love.

One of my most popular classroom activities is the making of a movie trailer after we study a play.  With the majority of newer iPads and cell phones  possessing video cameras that are HD quality, many of the students can film these projects using their own devices.  Of course, actual video cameras may be used as well.  The simplicity of movie editing programs like iMovie, Windows Movie Maker, and other similar programs allow students to use edit the film and use effects that we could only dream of having at our fingertips ten years ago.  So far, my classes have done Hamlet and Othello.  None of them will earn Oscars, but they all have a special place in my heart and the students appear to really enjoy this particular week of my class.

Chris’s students act out scenes from HAMLET for their trailer project.

I will give you a general overview of what the students are responsible for, but if anyone has more specific questions feel free to contact me.  First, the students make groups of 7-10 depending on class size.  Together, we view some film trailers in class and have a short discussion on what was effective or ineffective about each.  Next, the students decide on which scenes or lines must make an appearance in the film.  I try and stress to them that short clips are most effective, but if you watch the links that I provide you will see that they don’t always follow those instructions.  Sometimes their disobedience was effective and other times not so much.  After building the script, Students also need to discuss scene locations(we are limited to our school grounds), costumes, and props.  We usually borrow clothes from the drama department closet, but you will see in the Othello trailers that some were just dressed in normal school clothes. Finally,  we begin the filming process.  Even though the trailer will probably be no more than one to four minutes long, it will probably take at least three or four days to film and we have the block schedule at my high school.  One can never underestimate how many times the “actors” will stumble over their lines, unexpected encounters with  students from other classes or cars that appear in your video backgrounds forcing a cut, or when the laughter bug hits and nobody can keep a straight face.  You can view the bloopers reel at the end of our trailer videos to see what I mean.

After all of the filming is completed, the editing process takes over. I usually do most of the editing with the help of a few students.  I think this is a mistake that I need to remedy.  There is a pretty slick trailer feature on iMovie that my dog could probably figure out with a little time.  My plan this year is to arm the students with iPads and allow them to use the iMovie app to create their masterpieces.  I have included links to our previous trailers here.  Hamlet #1 , Hamlet #2 , Both Othello Trailers.

Staying on the theme of video production, I’d like to quickly share a project that two of my students created on their own that I now plan on having my future classes do as a formal assignment.  They called it the “Shakespeare Infomercial”. Neil and Spencer picked a product to sell that played a role in a specific play.  In one Othello infomercial, they sell an Egyptian handkerchief complete with strawberry embroidery. If the customers acted soon enough, they would also throw in a complimentary scimitar and scabbard.  They finished the video with several satisfied customer’s remarks.  What I enjoyed most about the infomercials was how they threw in several references to the plays and the Bard that were very clever.  Watch the Othello informercial here and then check out their Macbeth infomerical where they sell witch cauldrons among other items.  The portion of the assignment that takes the longest is the writing out of the script. They filmed and edited the video on an iPad in under an hour.

I am out of space, but I hope to share some more activities from my classroom in the future.  Thanks for taking the time to read this and making your classroom one that makes the Bard come alive!

Chris Lavold has been  an English teacher and baseball coach at Mauston High School in Mauston, WI for the past 16 years.  As a 2010 Folger Library Teaching Shakespeare Institute participant, he learned many valuable techniques and insights about Shakespeare and the teaching of his plays.  He has spoken at the NCTE conference for the past two years on behalf of the Folger on topics specializing in technology and the use of film in the classroom. Lavold can be reached at clavold@maustonschools.org  or follow him on Twitter @Shakehitch.

Read Full Post »

Audio Shakespeare

We’ve been thinking a lot about the benefit of having students listen to Shakespeare’s language.  With the recent release of the digital edition of Othello, we are in the process of producing an audio recording of the play that follows the Folger edition.  The goal is to enable students to read and hear the text at the same time.  Our current production of Henry V is going to give us the opportunity to do an audio recording of the Chorus speeches, and we’re thinking this might be helpful for students to have available to listen to, as well.  In the middle of considering all of this, it occured to us that it might be helpful to blog about it and see what kinds of responses we’d get to asking about how teachers use audio recordings of plays in their classrooms.  We’re not talking about passive listening. Rather, actively engaging students through a guided listening exercise or activity, for example.  So, do you use audio recordings of Shakespeare’s plays, or of any plays, in your classrooms? How do you use them?  Do you find the option to be a valuable one, based on your own classroom use?

Read Full Post »

Filming the Text

~by Rick Vanderwall

My fall semester Introduction to Literature students were a great group. This course is a required, entry level lit course for first year students.  Everybody takes this course and instructors are encouraged to develop unique, engaging themes for the course. I came up with “Journeys through Danger, Temptation, and Violence”. Although this title may seem an exercise in the Sergio Leone (The Good, The Bad and The Ugly) school of curricular development, it has actually worked fairly well.  The course begins with Cormac McCarthy’s THE ROAD, moves to Capote’s IN COLD BLOOD, takes a left turn to Dickens’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL, then Shakespeare’s MACBETH, finishing up with Marlowe’s FAUSTUS. Students engage with these texts in a variety of ways, including writing the traditional literary analysis, branching out into multi-genre projects with the CAROL.  The final two works, Macbeth and Faustus work well together thematically and comparatively. Performance activities blended with in-class readings has connected students with these texts in a new and often deeper way.   With some groups and some students the performance activities can be intimidating.  While some students have experience with this way of working with dramatic literature, for some it is a first.  Students new or otherwise may find performing in front of the class is daunting.  I have always offered doing scenes in video as an option but few have selected that option, until this past fall.

From the beginning it was clear that these students were ready for whatever experience I was willing to give them.  They quickly demonstrated experience and competence in the writing of the traditional college literary analysis. They loved to discuss and pushed me for more adventurous explorations of the material. As we moved into Macbeth we simultaneously worked our way through the text and formed production teams.  Each team selected a scene from a teacher provided list.  I provided some training in the language of Shakespeare and helped the groups engage with the text for deeper understanding.  When given the performance choice most chose video production over live performance, the reverse of previous groups. The resulting scenes met my expectations for close reading and engagement.  The discussion that resulted as we watched the videos was rich.  The quality of the videos mattered less than the scene concept expressed.

Rick’s students perform the text of Faustus in a video for a class project.

To View this Video, Click Here!

What I noticed as we moved into Marlowe’s Faustus was that the groups chose to stay together for the next performance project and expressed a desire to improve the films.  There seemed to be a competition among the groups to put forward an improved product. As the quality of the videos did improve, the level of the textual engagement became much deeper. One group in particular selected a complex task.  They wanted to do scenes from Faustus that included Good Angel/Bad Angel scenes.  I suggested they adapt several of these scenes into one. The act of adaption required a deep study of the text of these scenes in order weave them together.  The resulting video (linked below) opened an expanded discussion of the character of Faustus and speculation about author intent.  The culminating assignment was a paper comparing the two plays which seemed an afterthought compared to the high level of engagement of the scene production process.

I learned that alternatives to live classroom performance had potential for greater engagement. I have been aware for the past few years that more and more students came to class with experience in video production and skills with other technologies that could be utilized in performance activities.  Students reluctant to perform live in class were very willing to perform in video.  The level of engagement depended somewhat on my individual coaching of the groups and my facilitation of each group’s task/scene. I had to emphasize “process over product” and make sure not to become too focused on the success or failure of the technical aspects of projects. Instead, I commented on the concept students presented and how it addressed the text chosen.  With the videos all students, presenters and audience, were able to focus on the textual interpretation. We could easily replay all or part of the videos as comments or questions arose.

Some groups had issues with compatibility and portability of the videos.  I suggested as a backup that the videos be posted on YouTube.  Equipment varied from cellphone cameras to high end camcorders and use of Adobe Premier, iMovie, to Windows Movie Maker. Students were encouraged to use technology they had at hand.  I stated clearly that this project was not about the quality of the video but the depth of the textual engagement.  I set no “quality” standards but focused my attention on selecting challenging scenes and facilitating the groups as they addressed the task.

While this group was exceptional in their engagement, they did not seem unusual in the technology skills they possessed.  In written response following the completion of the project, they expressed surprise at the level of interest they developed in both Macbeth and Faustus.  They connected particularly with the moral dilemmas faced by both characters. As a result I am rethinking the culminating comparison paper.  Each semester informs the changes I will make for the next, that’s the one constant I have been able to count on over the course of my teaching career.

Rick Vanderwall is a faculty member in in the Department of Languages and Literatures specializing in English education At the University of Northern Iowa. He has been an educator in a middle school, high school for more than thirty-five years. He is still learning new things

Read Full Post »

“Shall we go draw our numbers, and set on?”

~by Julia Perlowski
(title quote from Henry IV, part 2)

In my high school honors English class, my well-meaning teacher decided to have us read Macbeth.  I was thrilled.  I had been in classes where teachers played records of famous Shakespearean monologues read by famous people with thick British accents.   Who can forget “Oh, pardon me thou bleeding piece of flesh that I am meek and gentle with these butchers!” out of the mouth of Marlon Brando?   Yikes!  If that is not enough to scare a child, I don’t know what is!  However, in this honors class we sat in desks in neat little rows and were asked which of us would like what part.  I wanted Macbeth!  I really did.  I had some fIuency with early modern English as I heard it from my mother’s mouth at bedtime and read it aloud in our family den when no one was looking.  The part initially went to Bruce Holsinger, who was the smartest boy in the school, now Professor of Music and English at University of Virginia. When Bruce needed a break and it was discovered that there was not another great male reader in the class, the part went to me.  I had a blast, and was quite pleased with myself, as was Bruce, that we were granted the coveted parts.  As a teacher of drama, reading and English, teaching Shakespeare in all of those classes since 2006, I now know that only 4 out of 35 kids “covet” those parts.  The rest are scared stiff or could not care less.  And, the kids who have a mild interest in Shakespeare don’t have much to do until they are finally prompted to say…”Here’s knocking indeed!”

I want to share a simple method, learned at the Folger and use extensively in my classrooms, to get ALL kids reading Shakespeare in a relatively short period of time, even with scenes where only two or three characters are speaking, even with monologues and soliloquies. Here it is:  Number the text.

That’s it!  A bulk of the good teaching methods with performative text relies on numbering lines in such a way that most kids get to have a go!  Most of my classes contain 30 students.  Most of my planning time consists of solving math problems in order to configure groups:  15 groups of 2; or, 2 groups of 15; or, 6 groups of 5, as well as numbering dialogue for maximum student performance time.  Consider this bit of dialogue from  Act 1, Scene 1 of Romeo and Juliet:

1 ABRAHAM:  Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?

2 SAMPSON:  I do bite my thumb, sir.

3 ABRAHAM:  Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?

4  SAMPSON:  [Aside to GREGORY] Is the law of our side, if I say ay?

5 GREGORY:  No.

6 SAMPSON:  No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite my thumb, sir.

7 GREGORY:  Do you quarrel, sir?

8 ABRAHAM:  Quarrel sir! no, sir.

9 SAMPSON:  If you do, sir, I am for you: I serve as good a man as you.

10 ABRAHAM:   No better.

11 SAMPSON:  Well, sir.

12 GREGORY:  Say ‘better:’ here comes one of my master’s kinsmen.

13 SAMPSON:  Yes, better, sir.

14 ABRAHAM:   You lie.

15 SAMPSON:   Draw, if you be men.

EVERYONE:  DOWN WITH THE CAPULETS!  DOWN WITH THE MONTAGUES!

PRINCE:

(1) Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace,
On pain of torture, from those bloody hands
Throw your mistemper’d weapons to the ground,
And hear the sentence of your moved prince.
(2) Three civil brawls, bred of an airy word,
By thee, old Capulet, and Montague,
Have thrice disturb’d the quiet of our streets,
If ever you disturb our streets again,
Your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace.

With the script numbered in this way, here are some possibilities for enactment in a class of 30 where all are involved:

1.  LINE VOLLEY:  Half the class can enact the EVEN numbered lines, the other half, the ODD numbered lines.  Lines will be spoken alternately between the lines.   One or more students can intervene as the Prince.

2.  ENSEMBLE SCENE:  Two groups of fifteen students can enact the scene each having their own line.   The part of the Prince may be read by all in unison…or by one person if one of the students takes two lines.

3.  3-D SHAKESPEARE:  Four students may perform the speaking parts of this scene with the rest of the class serving as directors with the teacher  facilitating between the actors and the audience asking the hard questions.  Who is here when the scene starts?

One of the most effective teaching days I had with this particular bit of numbered script consisted of a line volley with 45 students.  There were so many bodies that we “staged” the scene in two aisles of the audience across the middle orchestra seats.  Students delivered contentious lines as they climbed over seats brandishing rolled up scripts, eyeballing the enemies from the other side.

In another part of the country, two 3^rd grade boys share the Prince’s speech:

How do YOU do the math?

Read Full Post »