A version of this piece was published online in The Telegraph, March 19th 2014
This March, I’m an ambassador for Shakespeare Week (no sash, unfortunately).
I've been acting, writing about, producing, teaching, and running workshops on Shakespeare for the last 15 years, and I’m often asked why should we teach our younglings his works? I can answer with my own experiences.
This March, I’m an ambassador for Shakespeare Week (no sash, unfortunately).
I've been acting, writing about, producing, teaching, and running workshops on Shakespeare for the last 15 years, and I’m often asked why should we teach our younglings his works? I can answer with my own experiences.
I did terribly at
Shakespeare in English Literature, and struggled to get essay marks higher than
a C. But years of character parts in musicals had finally gotten me noticed by
a director, who was starting up a repertory company, and I started acting
Shakespeare at the beginning of my A-Levels.
By the time I had left for university I had acted in two Shakespeare plays, and auditioned for the National Youth Theatre and the Manchester Youth Theatre (both unsuccessfully and then successfully) with monologues from the canon.
By the time I had left for university I had acted in two Shakespeare plays, and auditioned for the National Youth Theatre and the Manchester Youth Theatre (both unsuccessfully and then successfully) with monologues from the canon.
Acting Shakespeare - Ariel, in The Tempest - outside in a new stone amphitheatre with perfect
acoustics, for the most part to an audience new to the play, and for many of my
fellow am-dram actors the first time we’d got to roll those words round our
mouths, softening with time like a gobstopper, in front of an audience.
It was there I had my Road to Damascus moment, for the biblically-minded out there, or caught my first Shakespeare wave, for the surfily-minded out there. It was the first time it made sense.
It was there I had my Road to Damascus moment, for the biblically-minded out there, or caught my first Shakespeare wave, for the surfily-minded out there. It was the first time it made sense.
Out there, covered in gold makeup, freezing my under-developed
ginger pectorals off in the September North Welsh rain, Shakespeare made sense,
and I fell hard and fast in love with acting his words.
From that moment on, I’ve never had too difficult a time
understanding Shakespeare, acting it, teaching it, explaining it to others, or
writing about it. I can take apart a speech in a dozen different ways,
and I spend a lot of my time working out how to articulate how we are guided by
Shakespeare towards the way he might have wanted it to be spoken, and then
attempting to articulate all this in the printed word.
I still have little to no idea how to analyse a piece from a
literary-critical point of view. I have a feeling I’d still get a C, despite the
15 years experience. It makes sense to me watching it in a theatre (even if the
production’s bad) and it makes sense to me when I’m acting it, or helping
others work out how to act it. I struggle to make it make sense on the page.
The key fits the lock, the engine growls, the car roars into
life, when acted. It’s what the words were written for.
Shakespeare is the reason I don’t work a 9-5. He’s
the reason I’m miserable sometimes, and he’s often the reason I laugh hard.
He’s the reason I earn less money than I could, and he’s the reason my life is
sometimes a shambles. But I get to work with the best English language
playwright most days of my life, and I consider myself blessed for that.
Shakespeare
teaches me something new about life every time I speak it, because I’m a day
older than the last time I looked at it, and so the words resonate differently
to me. A 13 year old girl can tell me more about what it’s
like to be Juliet than I can ever teach her. And the sooner you discover that
speaking Shakespeare is fun, the sooner you can pick up one of his scripts
(something that has been worked on in a similar way by thousands of artists
before you).
Then, if you learn the words by mind, and find a way to speak them
by heart in such a believable way that you activate that special part of your
audiences’ brains and engage their suspension
of disbelief, and maybe make them laugh or cry - well, what a wonderful thing
to do.
And for so
long, like so many others, I hated his works. We need to cut off the Medusa
head before the snake-hair sprouts, because by the time students get to
secondary school, an antipathy towards Shakespeare has often already set in,
almost by osmosis.
In reaching
out to over 1500 primary schools, Shakespeare Week is the perfect project to
encourage our younglings to speak and love Shakespeare, free from analytical
study.
Come on board, join in, bring a treasure chest of writing to the next generation of Shakespearians.
Come on board, join in, bring a treasure chest of writing to the next generation of Shakespearians.
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My Top 5 Ways to Engage Kids in Shakespeare
Quote it!
Whether it be telling your son he's a tower of
strength, or your daughter does something all of a sudden, you're quoting
Shakespeare. He brought over 1,000 words and phrases to the English Language
that we still use today.
Globe it!
Take your children to one of the touring productions
c/o Shakespeare's Globe. Legs might get tired standing at their home on the
South Bank in London, but you can take a picnic and sit in the sun to enjoy the
riotous, fun touring productions. This year it's the romantic comedy Much Ado
About Nothing. http://www.shakespearesglobe.com/theatre/whats-on/globe-theatre/much-ado-about-nothing-2014
Shout it!
Boy did Shakespeare know how to insult people! By
comparison, our vocabulary is fairly four-letter limited. Shakespeare's Insult
Kit (c/o Chris Seidel) is a harmless, inventive and fun way to introduce your
kids to the richness of his words. Get to it, thou artless, bat-fowling
bugbear!
Explore it!
Pick a play. A nice fun one like A Midsummer Night's
Dream, or a dark and bloody one like Macbeth, and explore some of those rich,
vivid characters. Go to a nearby park or wood and pretend to be Witches and
Faeries for half-an-hour. It's what Shakespeare's actors would once have done.
See it!
Whether it be a Manga cartoon adaptation, or
Shakespeare's Animated Tales, some of the Bard's best works have been given a
modern flavour. While simplified - and no replacement for The Real Thing - my 8
year old nephew adores them!
