Richard Garner reports on the Globe Theatre’s aim to make learning Shakespeare fun.
The days of pupils sitting in rows reciting Shakespeare plays in the classroom may be numbered. Instead, teachers are being encouraged to use interpretive dance and drama to bring the Bard’s words to life.
These include using the beat of the Haka war cry – as seen when the New Zealand rugby team takes to the pitch – to emphasise the most important words in a soliloquy, or miming part of the text as if pupils were performing a silent movie.
The exercises, outlined in a new booklet by Fiona Banks, senior adviser to the Globe Theatre’s creative programmes project, are aimed at making learning Shakespeare fun rather than a chore.
“Shakespeare was an actor and a playwright who wrote plays to be played on a stage and to be seen and heard by an audience,” she argues. “Reading his plays without any form of active engagement, without his words in our mouths and emotions and actions in our bodies, is like trying to engage with a piece of music by looking at the notes on the page but not listening to the music itself – or like reading a television script without watching the programme that was made.”
The days of pupils sitting in rows reciting Shakespeare plays in the classroom may be numbered. Instead, teachers are being encouraged to use interpretive dance and drama to bring the Bard’s words to life.
These include using the beat of the Haka war cry – as seen when the New Zealand rugby team takes to the pitch – to emphasise the most important words in a soliloquy, or miming part of the text as if pupils were performing a silent movie.
The exercises, outlined in a new booklet by Fiona Banks, senior adviser to the Globe Theatre’s creative programmes project, are aimed at making learning Shakespeare fun rather than a chore.
“Shakespeare was an actor and a playwright who wrote plays to be played on a stage and to be seen and heard by an audience,” she argues. “Reading his plays without any form of active engagement, without his words in our mouths and emotions and actions in our bodies, is like trying to engage with a piece of music by looking at the notes on the page but not listening to the music itself – or like reading a television script without watching the programme that was made.”