Posted on 10/18/2005 11:52:08 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Some Harbor-area teachers were “playing” around in the classroom Friday while their students had the day off.
It was a statewide teacher “in-service” day and they were learning how to better teach Shakespeare.
The workshop was conducted for high school teachers from schools around the county by members of the Seattle Shakespeare Company, which features a Hoquiam High School alum.
The pros addressed practical problems teachers face when trying to teach the works of history’s most renowned playwright. They looked at characters from an actor’s viewpoint and gave the teachers tips on how to hook teenagers on the work of a man who made his mark in the 1590s.
The teacher workshop was one component of a $25,000 grant the Seattle Shakespeare Company received from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Shakespeare in American Communities grant allows the 10 Harbor high schools to take 900 students to Seattle to watch live performances of Shakespeare’s plays.
“Although performance art opportunities are more plentiful on the Harbor than when I was a student in Hoquiam, I jumped at the chance to offer these professional performances to students from Grays Harbor,” said the Seattle Shakespeare Company’s education director, Michelle Traverso. “Seattle Shakespeare’s long-term educational goals include serving all students from Washington state, regardless of distance to Seattle. This grant helps us achieve those goals.”
The only expense to area schools is to cover transportation costs to Seattle. Tight budgets and spending restrictions, however, are making it difficult for some schools to come up with the transportation funds, Traverso said.
Students at schools that are able to cover transportation costs to the Center House Theatre at the Seattle Center will get to see “Romeo & Juliet,” “Richard III,” “Much Ado About Nothing,” or “Cyrano de Bergerac.”
the only way to understand shakespeare is to stand on ones feet and act it out, it is theatre not literature.
Perhaps the first lesson might be:
"For sooth, splitteth not thy infinitives."
I have heard that some schools are getting rid of Shakespeare all together. That would be a sad day for sure if they were to ignore on of the greatest writers of all times.
I'm sure the reason given that it was not relevant.
Actually, it's both, and there are plenty of people who act Shakespeare but don't have a clue what he's saying and others who do nothing but read him but can discuss him fluently.
he wrote plays--they are plays--to be played---The French considered him so vulgar that they cut the gravedigger scene from Hamlet, in the American west the endings were changed to happy endings--Cordielia recovers and is reunited with Lear-----the interpretation changes with each generation---but what is truely transendental about his work can only be appreciated in acting or watching his work acted out. I do suspect its is better for the actor than the passive watcher. My opinion only of course but it does come from personal experience.
Those examples just show you how destructive the theater can be to his writings. I don't think an actor's interpretation has any inherent superiority over the reader's, and is often much worse. I know from my own experience that a lot of actors don't even understand Elizabethan texts.
...while many other schools never offered Shakespeare to begin with ...
LOL
agreed a hundred times agreed, it is imersing oneself in the Eizabethan world that is exciting. To devolve his works to fit a feminist of gay agenda, or a nationalist or social agenda, is to miss the gold. but if one wraps oneself in the age of exploration, the English flower of philosophical awakening that was his time....I don't mean some stuffy masterpiece theate crap, its more a rough world with small pieces of exquisite beauty. Hamlet - a modern man in a Mideval world....Caliban - the native - the savage on a faroff island.... the awakening possible only to a seafaring people....their ocean voyages were more exotic than our space travel with contrast to their knowledge. The 2 best Hamlets (on film) are a Russian version from the 30s and Kevin Kleins'. The best Lear (on film) ironically is Albert Finney in The Dresser---he gets the FIVE nevers beautifully....makes me cry... but hey, were conservatives, eh, guess we agree in the sense that we are both "Originalists". Hope to continue this....passionate about the Bard... WONDERFUL.
Agreed. When I was in high school, we would have to read the plays for homework and then "discuss" them in class. BOOORRR-ING. In college, each student would take a different role, and we would do out-loud dramatic readings. Far superior and made the plays much more understandable.... and a lot of fun, to boot.
"What, you egg! Young fry of treachery!" Dialogue like that just doesn't work in silent reading. But read aloud with feeling, Shakespeare's dialogue comes alive.
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