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Why Teach and Perform Shakespeare?
Learning from the Bard


Philip Levien , San Marcos High School
Santa Barbara, CA

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Final Performance
December 7: Final Performance
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I don’t know how you can "prove" everything that my kids get out of being in the Sheltered Theater Production, despite various quantitative methods you can use.  In my gut, I just know some things. I think probably the most important thing they learn is how to get along, how to work together as people, how to be compassionate, the kinds of things you can’t measure on  a bubble test.  But if you look at what we’re doing here on paper, there’s no way it should work. You have kids who don’t speak English, and many who can’t read, behavior problems—it’s Shakespeare, and many have never acted before,  most of them don’t even want to be in the class in the beginning. The counselors size them up, have to find a place for them, and say, “Just go here, you’ll like it.”  So there’s no way it should work, and yet it does,  and they turn out to be so supportive of each other, and so to the task. With these girls playing the narrators, one of the people forgot to bring the wine goblet on stage, and I saw them, they’re poring through the script to find the appropriate time that one of them should bring it on.  In terms of engagement in the script, and interpretation.  And then in terms of a sense of community, all those things are right there in that moment.  I could tell you that in terms of cutting, there’s much less of that. I almost had no cuts after the first two weeks for several years. But with 17 at-risk kids, I did see some cutting, this was the hardest show to mount.  I had a couple of people not show to performances, and we had people cover their roles, which shows commitment, versatility, understanding the text. 

High Expectations

I have students sign a pledge that says if they don’t come to the show, if they miss a performance, it’s an automatic failure.  I don’t know if I’ve failed anybody in previous years, but I failed a couple of people this year.  One girl got into trouble the night of the opening and got suspended.   I have to protect the show and the other kids’ commitment. 

What Students Take Away From the Sheltered Theater Production

Dean's Council
Presenting at UCSB's Dean's Council
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I have a colleague in the English department who gets a lot of these kids in the second semester in English 9.  Most kids are intimidated by Shakespeare.  But the kids who'd been in my class said, “Oh, Shakespeare, we’ve done this.”  They actually were better with Romeo and Juliet than the native speakers– so much so that she had to get another Shakespeare play to keep them busy while the native speakers were reading Romeo and Juliet.

Another piece of anecdotal evidence is the experience of some of my Special Needs students. I've had several students with Asperger's Syndrome, for instance. They have been some of my strongest actors; flexible, eager, consistent and very inventive. And they have really been appreciated by the other members of the company. It shows that mainstreaming really can work and have some very positive results for everyone.

 

 

 


The work on this website includes ethnographic video documentation recorded by Richard Nardi and ChunXia Wang, and was supported in part by the Center for Teaching for Social Justice at U.C. Santa Barbara.

Site last updated February 21, 2006