Promoting the study, practice
and enjoyment of Shakespeare.
29th January 2018
We are pleased to announce that the fourteenth issue of Teaching Shakespeare, is now available for free download.
Please note that the photograph on p.14 was erroneously credit to Saeko Machi. It was in fact taken by the company’s photographer Steve Lewis.
You can read back issues of Teaching Shakespeare elsewhere on this website.
22nd January 2018
John Barton receiving his honorary fellowship of the BSA in 2017.
The British Shakespeare Association is saddened by the death of the great Shakespearean John Barton on Thursday 18th January 2018. John was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the BSA in 2016. His trust in the richness of Shakespeare’s scripts, and in the ability of actors to express that to playgoers made him a generating force in Shakespearean production.
His generosity was renowned: ‘actors of whatever age and experience loved working with him, for you always learned something new’ (Cicely Berry). As Shakespeare wrote in Antony and Cleopatra ‘The breaking of so great a thing should make a greater crack’: John was a powerhouse of Shakespearean performance and we mourn his passing.
22nd December 2017
This post is part of a series of brief, ‘first impression’ reviews of books on Shakespeare in Education. Look out for others posted to the BSA’s Education Network Blog.
Name of reviewing team: Kayleigh
In a Nutshell, this book is about:
Exploring different ways to teach Othello to students who are studying. It looks at each scene and gives you lesson plans, character maps.
Who would like it?
Teachers would like this book. Teacher who enjoy teaching more active methods to help engage student’s understanding.
Who wouldn’t like it?
Perhaps the more traditional teacher who prefers sticking to the script without active learning
Best Feature?
The “before reading the scene” summary. This helps the teacher recap what is in the scene. Also the exercise starters.
Worst Quality?
Maybe more pictures in colour, if the teachers wanted to copy/scan a sheet for students.
21st December 2017
A guest post by Claire Chambers (English) and Sarah Olive (Education), University of York
On 24 November 2017, a group of teachers, academics, council employees, theatre and arts practitioners from Leeds, York and London gathered at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. They proceeded to strut, charge and spin their way around the room, playing out archetypes from Shakespeare and characters from The Tempest. Along the way, they became acquainted with Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud (the Moroccan Ambassador to Elizabeth I), considered other intersections between Shakespeare and South Asian cultures, discovered resources for teaching Shakespeare, and arranged visits to each others’ schools. What was the impetus for this energetic and varied activity, which borrowed from everyday work but offered an unusual amalgam?
Leeds Meets Shakespeare is a project led by Claire Chambers, with Sarah Olive and a team of project partners: Therese O’Sullivan, Learning Improvement Consultant, from Leeds City Council, Children & Families; Sarah Westaway, Head of Arts Development from Artforms; Amy Lancelot, Creative Education Manager at the West Yorkshire Playhouse; and Georghia Ellinas, Head of Learning from Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Therese O’Sullivan says of the collaboration: ‘Leeds City Council Learning Improvement Team are delighted to be a part of this exciting project which will celebrate the cultural capital of Leeds pupils and provide excellent professional development for teachers in Arooj schools’. Amy Lancelot offered her theatre education team’s perspective: ‘West Yorkshire Playhouse is always looking for new ways to support schools with their delivery of a vital and vibrant curriculum. We believe taking part in ground-breaking research is an important part of this, and look forward to potentially expanding the project throughout Leeds in later years.’
The project asks whether teaching Shakespeare can raise the attainment of Year 1 English as an Additional Language (EAL) pupils in literacy, oracy, and self-confidence. (If you’re interested in EAL Shakespeare, see also Teaching Shakespeare magazine issues 1, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13 and forthcoming 14.) It also asks how Continuing Professional Development sessions for teachers around postcolonial, Bollywood and other South Asian Shakespeares might help their effectiveness in the multicultural classroom. Advancing Chambers’ long-standing collaboration with Leeds City Council and Artforms, as well as developing new partnerships, the project will be piloted in six Arooj (‘Ascension’ or ‘Arising’) primary schools.
These schools have a significant numbers of British-Pakistani and -Bangladeshi pupils and an above-average intake of EAL pupils. Resources and skills for teaching Shakespeare will be developed that can be rolled out to other schools after the lifetime of the project by the Arooj schools as well as the West Yorkshire Playhouse in their work with and beyond these schools. The broader project Arooj is an ongoing initiative to improve the attainment of Leeds pupils of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage. Chambers was involved with Arooj as it went city-wide, encompassed primary and secondary schools, and promoted better understanding of Islamic cultural backgrounds. She then worked as a consultant for the affiliated Kids’ Own Publishing project (2013−2015), in which reception children from Arooj schools worked with an artist to produce simple picture books in dual languages. These picture books were developed to increase the number of books available in which pupils could see positive images of themselves and their languages reflected.
The primary aim of the Leeds Meets Shakespeare project is to engage teachers and their pupils in creative approaches to literacy, oracy, and emotional intelligence. Each of the topics is built using Shakespearean stories (namely The Tempest and A Winter’s Tale), and comprises intensive teacher training, in-class support by a team of Learning Consultants, and a focus on the National Curriculum. Introducing British-Asian pupils to Shakespeare’s language at a young age should prove invaluable to the development of their vocabulary and confidence. The project has three key objectives which will be measured in terms of their success and associated outcomes:
As the project rolls out over the next few months, you can follow its progress on Twitter with the hashtag #LeedsMeetsShakespeare and our accounts @clarachambara and @DrSarahOlive. Additionally, Claire Chambers is a columnist for Dawn, Pakistan’s oldest and most widely-read English language newspaper, and reflections on the project will feature there. We plan to report back to British Shakespeare Association members on the project’s results. In the meantime, please find attached our Powerpoint slide shows on ‘Shakespeare in South Asian cultures’ and ‘Resources for Teaching Shakespeare’. The full article relating to Chambers’ attachment, ‘“To Love the Moor”: Postcolonial Artists Write Back to Shakespeare’s Othello’, was published in 2016 in the journal Postcolonial Interventions. We hope these materials inspire you in your teaching Shakespeare. If you have any questions about the project, or would like to get in touch with questions concerning it, please email claire.chambers@york.ac.uk.
15th December 2017
This post is part of a series of brief, ‘first impression’ reviews of books on Shakespeare in Education. Look out for others posted to the BSA’s Education Network Blog.
Name of reviewing team: Eve
In a Nutshell, this book is about:
Providing theatre study’s and emerging theatre artists with the tools and skills to analyse scripts. Based around Stanislavsky’s system of acting and method acting. Focus on action, time and places
Who would like it?
Students studying the book mentioned or wanting to expand their understanding of script analysing. Teachers of drama, theatre or English literature
Who wouldn’t like it?
Younger students who are not interested in script analysis. Not necessarily for theatregoers only.
Best Feature?
Includes a range of the most studied pages so most students would have experience or use the book to help with their studies
Worst Quality?
Relatively boring inside. No pictures and lots of text which is not very broken up.
8th December 2017
This post is part of a series of brief, ‘first impression’ reviews of books on Shakespeare in Education. Look out for others posted to the BSA’s Education Network Blog.
Name of reviewing team: Katherine
In a Nutshell, this book is about:
Who would like it?
Who wouldn’t like it?
Directors and actors opposed to Chekhov’s techniques.
Best Feature?
Includes lists of exercises and explains how to do them and their effects on the cast/actor.
Worst Quality?
Focuses a lot on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, could have more options.
7th December 2017
On Friday, November 17th, more than 60 Shakespeare students, scholars, theatre practitioners, and enthusiasts gathered at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Other Place Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon to discuss emotion in Shakespeare’s plays. This educational event, called ‘Shakespeare’s Emotions, Lost and Found’, was aimed at A-level students and university undergraduates and formed part of the nationwide Being Human Festival, which ran from 17-25 November and showcased research in the humanities in more than 45 UK cities and towns. In Stratford, ‘Shakespeare’s Emotions’ was organized and supported by the collaboration between the RSC and the University of Birmingham, with further support from the British Shakespeare Association.
The event began with a half-hour panel chaired by Dr Daisy Murray and featuring academics associated with the University of Birmingham and theatre practitioners and audience analysts from the RSC. Dr Erin Sullivan and Dr Kerry Cooke spoke about understandings of emotion in Shakespeare’s time, as well as the ways in which performing the plays on stage creates a complex emotional relationship between performers, characters, audiences, and text. Matt Dann and Esh Alladi, both part of the RSC’s current production of Twelfth Night, in turn reflected on the role of emotion in the rehearsal room and the kinds of emotional journeys actors experience as they acquaint themselves with a new role. Becky Loftus, Head of Audience Insight at the RSC, finished things off by speaking about a study that the theatre conducted into audiences’ emotional responses to live theatre, cinema broadcasts of theatre, and 360° VR theatre (more on that study available here).
Thinking about the differences and similarities between ideas about emotion in the past and present proved especially interesting for many participants, with one university undergraduate commenting that she ‘enjoyed hearing about the historical context, which created another way of looking at Shakespeare’. Likewise, a university postgraduate noted that ‘the panel’s discussion of the perception of emotion in the early modern period [was] very interesting. I spend a good deal of time reading the modern scientific papers on emotion in voice and visual communication, so to compare those ideas with the idea of the four humors was intriguing.’
In the second half-hour, the audience broke into small groups and looked at a selection of emotional passages from Shakespeare chosen by each member of the panel. Each group was led by a PhD student in Shakespeare studies who served as a discussion facilitator, inviting participants to talk through the emotional experiences, ideas, metaphors, and scenarios depicted in their passage. For many audience members, the chance to become actively involved in small-group discussion was a particular highlight: ‘working in small groups to further discuss emotions as well as listening to other people’s ideas’ was especially enriching, one A-level student commented, while an undergraduate reflected on how the ‘opportunity to read an extract in group work before and after our analytical discussion’ encouraged him to think more deeply about ‘how dialogue changed with added knowledge of its context’.
Attendees at the event weren’t the only ones who found the small-group discussions beneficial. The five PhD facilitators, whose involvement was made possible by a British Shakespeare Association small event award, spoke afterwards how the event helped them develop new ideas and skills: ‘Participating in the “Shakespeare’s Emotions: Lost and Found” event gave me practical and valuable experience in a teaching setting’; ‘It showed me that preparation is invaluable, and it was lovely working with a young group of students who had very creative and intelligent responses to the text’; ‘I was very pleased by the group’s happy surprise that our quite challenging passage had, in the course of the discussion, suddenly become not only intelligible but even emotionally resonant’; ‘Several students even stopped me on the way out to ask further questions and share more ideas’. The event offered these early career scholars the chance to develop their teaching and public engagement skills and to work with Shakespeare enthusiasts from a range of different backgrounds.
In the final half-hour of the session, representatives from each of the small groups and the opening panellists finished with short presentations and whole-group discussion about the varied role of emotion in Shakespeare. Students highlighted key ideas discussed in relation to their passages, including the way specific words and images help shape emotion, the way performance turns emotion into a very social and at times tense event, and how historical differences in ideas about emotion can give us new insights into how culture shapes human experience. As the event came to a close, many participants hurried off to grab a quick dinner and then to take their seat for the RSC’s evening performance of Twelfth Night – no doubt resulting in even more emotional experiences and ideas after an already very passionate afternoon!
4th December 2017
Stuart Rathe is Education Manager for Shakespeare Schools Foundation. In this posting he writes about his involvement in the Shakespeare Schools Festival – both as a Teacher Director and ‘on the other side of the curtain’ working as part the Festival itself. In a developing relationship, the British Shakespeare Association is keen to support the activities of the Shakespeare Schools Foundation.
“Because of SSF, I was able to bond with lots of people and make friends with people I never thought I would” – Poppy, student, Pontypridd
I’m Education Manager for Shakespeare Schools Foundation (SSF) – a cultural education charity which uses the unique power of Shakespeare to change the lives of young people all over the UK.
Every year, we run the world’s largest youth drama project, with 1,000 schools performing an abridged Shakespeare production in professional theatres up and down the country. It’s non-competitive and it brings whole communities into theatres.
We are most certainly about Shakespeare, but we are also about improving life chances and creating opportunities for young people from primary, secondary and special school settings. These pupils grow in confidence and aspiration, and they develop fantastic collaborative skills. Our evaluation data shows that Festival participation also helps them to improve academically, and to encourage a greater love of learning.
Before joining SSF, I was a Teacher Director myself. I participated in the Festival with my Year 6 classes for several years, performing everything from Hamlet to Twelfth Night. I was even lucky enough to accompany a group of my ten and eleven year old pupils to 10 Downing Street for a charity gala last year, where they got to perform an abridgement of Julius Caesar in front of David Cameron in his very last week in office! I’ll never forget young Millie pointing to that bloodied shroud and asking us to imagine the most unkindest cut of all, as assembled politicians and dignitaries listened, rapt, to a ten year old girl from Merseyside commanding sixteenth century language with such incredible poise and understanding…
But my proudest moments as an SSF Teacher Director were simple moments like the time young Owen told me that the most fun he’d ever had in school was playing Laertes, or watching our Lady Macbeth, Livvy (who was considered to be low attaining in English) take centre stage at a professional theatre with a magnificent archetypal performance!
Now that I work for SSF, I get to see another side of the Festival: that huge logistical jigsaw involving nearly thirty thousand pupils and over 130 theatres. And I get to watch other schools participate in the Festival: a slightly more relaxing experience as I fondly remember my own time as a Teacher Director!
I’m based in the North West of England, and so my Festival journey this year begins at the Floral Pavilion on the Wirral, where I get to watch my old school, Overchurch Juniors, perform Henry V. I’m full of pride as I watch my ex-colleague Collette Corlett, who’s taken the Shakespearean mantle from me and directed a magnificent Henry – and certainly the funniest I’ve ever seen (with a particularly rousing rendition of ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’ from the entire ensemble as French Princess Katherine tries to get to grips with the English language with the help of her exasperated maid Alice). Ten year old Archie plays Henry with gusto, standing on a chair to deliver the St Crispin’s Day speech, as his rag-tag gang surround him and cheer. I know he’s channelling a little of Kenneth Branagh in his performance (not least because he proudly tells me he’s been studying different versions of the play on YouTube). Not bad for someone who hasn’t even hit their teens yet!
Michael Flynn from St Joseph’s Junior School at Shakespeare Schools Festival Bain Gala
Later that month, I’m at the Contact Theatre in Manchester, watching Eccles’ St Mary’s Primary. Teacher Director Peter Webster has put together some incredible visual storytelling (such as red ribbons dangling from daggers to signify Duncan’s flowing blood). The performances are great: a true ensemble committed to telling a remarkable story. I keep interrupting Peter to tell him how great the show is (probably very irritating as he is busy with the theatre technicians, plotting light and sound design). When I point out that one of the narrators has a particularly engaging delivery, Peter proudly tells me that the young boy has English as an Additional Language. Backstage, Banquo beams as I tell him that his command of Shakespeare’s language made it sound like he was speaking in entirely modern vernacular.
And finally, my travels take me to Knowsley, near Liverpool. There’s a great Shakespeare buzz around Knowsley at the moment, as the borough is soon to be home to a new Jacobean style theatre and Education Centre, called Shakespeare North, which traces its roots back to the Earl of Derby’s patronage of Shakespeare. The audience at Knowsley Culture and Leisure Park is made up of proud mums, dads and grandparents, and it’s a joyous night. One production includes multiple Macbeths: if you’re wearing the red sash then you’ve become Macbeth and have your moment in the spotlight – a wonderful way of spreading the load, and of giving every pupil a chance to shine. Elsewhere, there’s a charming Much Ado, full of singing and dancing. I wonder if the Teacher Director has seen the recent Mexican themed Globe production, as the vibrant colours and dance routines seem to take inspiration from South America.
As I attend my final Festival performance for 2018, I’m reminded of the pride I felt every year as an SSF Teacher Director and the incredible sense of achievement felt by each and every cast member at the end of a successful performance. We did it! Quickly followed by… “What play shall I tackle next year, and how soon can I register for the 2018 Festival?”
In addition to our flagship Festival, SSF provide school workshops for KS2 and GCSE, Teacher CPD and curriculum schemes of work to accompany specific plays.
For more information, visit shakespeareschools.org or email stuart@shakespeareschools.org
1st December 2017
This post is part of a series of brief, ‘first impression’ reviews of books on Shakespeare in Education. Look out for others posted to the BSA’s Education Network Blog.
Name of reviewing team: Daisy
In a Nutshell, this book is about:
Familiarizing readers with the authors of famous plays, specifically Shakespeare to gain understanding of their reasoning for certain aspects of plays, with specific attention towards their habits, thought process and achievements. Provides lots of knowledge is “how did the plague affect Shakespeare”
Who would like it?
Students, teachers, broad audience is anyone with an inters in Shakespeare and his writing.
Who wouldn’t like it?
People with no interest in Shakespeare and the content he wrote.
Best Features?
Worst Quality?
Could provide more information about certain aspects that haven’t been discussed.
29th November 2017
Yuto Koizumi is an Associate professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology. He teaches at the Institute of Liberal Arts, Tokyo Institute of Technology. His postgraduate research, on Shakespearean cinema, was undertaken at Waseda University. He also received an M.A. from King’s College, London. He has published several articles on Shakespeare and film.
This article is continued from Teaching Shakespeare, issue 13, on using film in the higher education Shakespeare classroom.
In his review of Renaissance Man, starring Danny DeVito, Roger Ebert offers a point for class discussion on the way in which teaching Shakespeare relates to the army, the film’s setting. He says his ‘doubts about the possibility of teaching Shakespeare in this way [with Rago’s enthusiasm] are surpassed only by my doubts about how the exercise has anything to do with the Army’. Before casting ‘doubt’ on this issue, I would ask my students how the film uses Shakespeare in the context of the film’s narrative/plot/screenplay and how Hamlet loses its central position. Interestingly, the film’s focus on Shakespeare shifts from teaching Hamlet to experiencing Henry V, a transition which Ebert somehow fails to catch. In the middle of the term, Rago takes his students to a theatre in Canada to show them a Shakespeare play; despite the expectation most audiences would have, the play is not Hamlet but Henry V. This is exactly the point I would like my students to notice and discuss further. Why does the film introduce this history play in the latter part of the story?
Renaissance Man deals with Henry V because it offers appropriate material to discuss war and soldiers. There are some visual points for my class to observe and ask: in terms of visual effect, why do Rago’s students wear army uniforms even when they go to the theatre? What happens next during night training? What kind of comments do they make about the play? Which speech from Henry V does a soldier recite during drill in the rain? All of these questions work to stimulate students who do not know what the history play is about yet.
Renaissance Man features perhaps the most famous speech in Henry V, the St. Crispin speech. In drill training under heavy rain, Sergeant Cass whiplashes his trainees; suddenly he orders Pvt. Melvin to recite any Shakespeare line, but Melvin cannot bring anything to mind. The drill in the rain is a good opportunity for Cass to challenge Rago’s class again and try to prove that learning literature does not make sense for military education. The Sergeant, then calls on Pvt. Benitez and orders him to do the same. Benitez starts to recite Henry’s St. Crispin speech and surprisingly remembers its entirety. The audience recall that Benitez bought and read Henry V’s text after Rago took him to the play: he saw the play, was inspired, and independently chose to study the play by himself.
This moment is one of the key scenes in which Shakespeare relates to the Army as Henry V is concerned with issues about the leader and his soldiers in a war. Sergeant Cass does not stop Benitez’s recitation just because the film wants to make the scene emotionally touching: rather, the sergeant realizes Benitez/Henry/Shakespeare is talking about how good soldiers should be in a state of emergency. Thus, the scene gives Shakespeare teachers like us an opportunity to ask students to read Henry V, particularly the speech, before or after the screening, and to consider the theme of war in the play.
The other scene in the film that refers to Shakespeare’s consideration of soldiers is Rago’s final exam. Picking up each character and plot, Rago asks his students for their interpretation of Hamlet. What is effective about Rago’s teaching method is that he then asks why the student has formed a certain impression of a certain character; Rago has also grown as a professional teacher who does not neglect his student’s own voice or his own idea, and does not rely on a textbook interpretation. Pvt. Haywood says he hates Laertes. Encouraged to go on, Haywood answers:
Laertes is a fool! He ain’t never stopped to think about what type of person Hamlet was. All he does is do what the king tells him to do. When he fights Hamlet, all they do is end up killin’ each other. That’s his problem. He don’t stop and think before he acts.
This idea gives an important perspective to military ethics: the soldier should be a loyal public servant, but he is simultaneously responsible for his individual decision to carry out his military service, for example using his weapons on the field of battle. Furthermore, Pvt. Melvin has also matured to compare his life of a soldier with Shakespeare’s idea. Asked ‘what do we get from this play?’ he concludes: ‘You know, all the people in the play, kings and queens and princes, they all die. And in the end, all that’s left is the two guys: Fortinbras and Horatio: soldier and student. Ain’t that somethin’ ?’
A teacher could use Melvin’s comment and asks his students why Shakespeare saves these two characters ultimately. In response, some students may think people need to have two mindsets in one personality: to keep thinking as an academic person and to never stop challenging as a courageous soldier, for instance. If the teacher could also describe how Henry was recognized as a prodigal son when he was Prince Hal in Henry IV, his students may be interested in the synchronicity between Rago’s students and the prodigal Prince: Renaissance Man is a film about low achievers coming to maturity through the power of liberal arts, just as Prince Hal grows up to be a noble king. Rago, then perhaps, may even be seen as a modern incarnation of Falstaff, but one who could not be dismissed by his ‘student’, instead inspiring the noble king.
Some students may discuss potential difficulties with the narrative structure of Renaissance Man if they pay attention to the film’s double focus on Hamlet and Henry V. It may be thought that introducing Henry V fails to make the film coherent rather than using only Hamlet, which greatly inspires Rago’s students first and foremost. However, what gives Renaissance Man a carefully thought out structure is the introduction of the history play with its considerations on the topic of war. As becomes obvious in the scene of the final exam, Rago’s students have learned to think by themselves; in this case, at least Haywood and Melvin look at Hamlet from a soldier’s point of view. This dual focus of the plot is necessary to show how the interpretation of one play enables students to learn from another play, even if these genres are far different; the narratives are somehow interconnected and thus may help one think of each play more deeply.
Renaissance Man is useful material to introduce and teach Shakespeare: in my class’s experience, it helps students enjoy Hamlet and (as we will see in issue 14) Henry V. Also, referencing and responding to Ebert’s review helped them analyze the film more insightfully. The most important point is that the film gives teachers an indication of a method to pass Shakespeare on to younger generations: connecting the Bard to our/students’ reality as closely as possible as Rago does. Renaissance Man, in this sense, is a comedy worth introducing to students, who potentially become inspired to look at the world through Shakespeare’s eyes.
Ebert, Roger. ‘Renaissance Man’. RogerEbert.com. Jun. 3 (1994): n.p. Web. 25 Mar. 2017.
Robinson, Ken and Lou Aronica. Creative Schools. UK: Penguin Books, 2015.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. G. R. Hibbard. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
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