Here I have attempted to acknowledge some of the works that have most informed the conversation of Subversive Shakespeare, and to direct interested participants and readers of the conversation toward further material. Some of the sources listed here are descriptions and discussions about specific rehearsal room activities and classroom exercises and other approaches to Shakespeare’s texts. Other sources offer valuable principles that serve as the foundation for various ways in which the plays can be presented to students as scripts, as Rex Gibson says in Teaching Shakespeare, “to be played with, explored, actively and imaginatively brought to life by acting out” (7-8).
A valuable resource in this conversation is, in fact, Gibson’s Teaching Shakespeare (New York: Cambridge School Shakespeare, 1998). The extent to which Gibson is mentioned throughout Shakespeare pedagogy attests to the value of Teaching Shakespeare and Gibson’s other titles with Cambridge School Shakespeare.
The first book I read that connected rehearsal techniques and classroom activities, that understood how actors’ objectives with an audience can inform teachers’ objectives with a classroom of students was Creative Shakespeare: The Globe Education Guide to Practical Shakespeare (New York: Arden Shakespeare, 2013). Fiona Banks, Senior Adviser for Creative Programmes at Shakespeare’s Globe, offers in that book descriptions of many exercises from Globe rehearsal sessions, as well as the classroom activities that have developed from them: those techniques “used to create performance,” Banks states, that can “equally become a catalyst for learning” (xv).
Numerous books by Cicely Berry, including The Voice and the Actor (Wiley Publishing, 1973), The Actor and the Text (Applause Acting Series, 1987), Text in Action (New York: Virgin, 2001), and From Word to Play (London: Oberon Books, 2008), are rich resources for classroom teachers. Even though Berry’s primary experiences with the activities she describes are in the theater (she was Director of Voice for many years with The Royal Shakespeare Company), she relates, as well, many classroom scenes in her books, scenes such as one that takes place when she was “doing a series of workshops . . . looking at Othello with a group of upper-sixth-form boys” (28).
A series of five workshops Cicely Berry gave in New York when she spent time with Theater For A New Audience is available in a CD package, entitled The Working Shakespeare Library (Montclair, New Jersey: Applause Books, 2004). The filmed workshops are very interesting because they allow viewers to see the activities and to see how Berry, herself, interacts with the actors who participate in the workshops. Two books, Working Shakespeare: The Workbook, by Berry, and The Voice Preparation Workbook, by Andrew Wade, Head of Voice for The Royal Shakespeare Company, are included in the package.
John Barton, who, with Peter Hall, co-founded The Royal Shakespeare Company, leads a group of actors from the company (including Judi Dench, Ben Kingsley, Ian McKellen, Roger Rees, Patrick Stewart, and David Suchet, among others) in a group of nine sessions that explore Shakespeare’s language. Barton discusses various aspects of the plays, and the actors demonstrate with speeches, dialogues, and soliloquies. The sessions, RSC: Playing Shakespeare, are available from Amazon.com, and they may also be accessed on line. Many of the demonstrations suggest valuable and interesting classroom activities that teachers might want to develop.
While Giles Block’s audience is not teachers, and his focus is not in the schoolroom, his discussion about Shakespeare’s language in Speaking the Speech: An Actor’s Guide to Shakespeare (London: Nick Hern Books,2013), is none-the-less a great source for teachers developing exercises for their students in the Shakespeare classroom. By the end of the book, Block says, “I want each of you to feel that you have found your way to approach these wonderful plays, with confidence . . . (3). Surely that wish could be made for students in the classroom as well as the actors Block works with. Much of what Block says, particularly his discussion about the development of Shakespeare’s use of iambic pentameter in The Merchant of Venice, has real potential, as a beginning point for classroom exercises. His use of “duologues” as a careful way to examine a text could be especially useful to a teacher.
Two books, Directing Shakespeare in America: Current Practices, (New York: Arden Shakespeare, 2016), by Charles Ney, and Shakespeare in the Theatre: Mark Rylance at the Globe (New York: Arden Shakespeare, 2017), by Stephen Purcell, feature discussions of rehearsal room exercises and other activities by a wide variety of directors. Charles Ney’s book contains many discussions in which directors talk about the responsibilities of staging a play, from “developing an approach,” and “preparing the production text,” to “beginning rehearsals,” and “table work,” and finally, “staging the play,” “middle stage rehearsals,” and “tech and dress rehearsals.” Throughout these discussions, over 75 American directors describe activities that have real possibilities of being developed into exercises for students in the classroom. Stephen Purcell’s book, likewise, contains discussions with Mark Rylance about his time as artistic director at Shakespeare’s Globe, as well as discussions with various others who directed plays there while Rylance was artistic director. In these discussions, the directors, including in a lengthy personal interview, Rylance himself, describe rehearsal room activities that they developed as part of their work directing at the Globe. Many of these activities could be adapted by teachers to be used in their classrooms, and, in fact, many would be quite valuable as classroom exercises.
Another book in that series, Shakespeare in the Theatre: Cheek by Jowl (New York: Arden Shakespeare, 2019), offers a description of Cheek by Jowl director Declan Donnellan’s approach to Shakespeare’s plays. As described by author Peter Kirwin, many of the approaches Donnellan uses suggest rehearsal room activities that could be developed for the classroom.
Declan Donnellan’s book, The Actor and the Target (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2002), “comes from the heart of his own experience,” according to actor Alan Rickman, and that is exactly what makes this book so valuable. Donnellan’s “own experience,” along with his “insightful voice,” according to actor Joseph Fiennes, “guides us to the heart of the process.” Donnellan’s descriptions of what goes on in rehearsal sessions with Cheek by Jowl could easily be adapted for the classroom.
The activities in Ken Ludwig’s How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare (New York: Broadway Books, 2013) are designed for a one-on-one exchange between a parent and child, but Ludwig’s methods are easily adaptable for activities with classrooms of students. The value Ludwig puts on memorization is an especially unique approach to Shakespeare pedagogy and has real potential for teaching “children” Shakespeare.
Thinking Shakespeare: a working guide for actors, directors, students . . . and anyone else interested in the Bard (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2018), written by director Barry Edelstein, is full of activities he has used in rehearsal with actors; teachers, however, will find them very helpful in approaching Shakespeare’s plays with their students. Chapters that discuss “scansion and the architecture of the verse line,” “phasing with the verse line,” and “the music of the language, and its rhythm, tempo, and pace,” are especially full of exciting activities and useful ideas for the classroom, but there is more to this book, besides.
Graham Watt’s book, Shakespeare’s Authentic Performance Texts: The Case for Staging from the First Folio (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1959), describes many activities that teachers might develop for their classrooms, as he makes his case for using the text of the first folio for staging Shakespeare’s plays. His chapter, “A Director’s Approach: ‘the rich advantage of a good exercise,'” however, is, in fact, a “rich advantage” for teachers looking to develop such classroom exercises.
Below are several additional books that explore Shakespeare in the schoolroom. In none of these schoolrooms are students seated passively at their desks, silently reading. In all of them, students explore the plays in active, imaginative, and creative ways. In the introduction to his book, Acting Shakespeare’s Language (London: Oberon Books, 2015), for example, “as you go through the book,” Andy Hines recommends, “you do each of the short exercises.” Hines’ goal, he says, in the book, is “to bring Shakespeare’s lines and speeches clearly and dramatically to life” (xiii). I believe all the authors of the books below have a similar goal and, so, the resources they offer the teacher in the Shakespeare classroom are valuable, indeed. Other books include: Mary Ellen Dakin’s Reading Shakespeare with Young Adults (Urbana, Illinois: National Council Teachers of English, 2009); Kristin Linklater’s Freeing Shakespeare’s Voice: The Actor’s Guide to Talking the Text (New York: Theatre Communication Group, 1992); Patrick Tucker’s Secrets to Acting Shakespeare: The Original Approach (New York: Routledge, 2002); Valerie Clayman Pye’s Unearthing Shakespeare: Embodied Performance and the Globe (New York: Routledge, 2017).
