Shakespeare Out Loud

Practice

2009-09-08T14:15:00.000-07:00

When learning a new dance or musical instrument or even a speech, little nerve endings in your brain flash electrical impulses between your neurons. Through practice, electrical pathways are established that can be re-travelled at a later date. In my longtime, well-practiced Shakespeare Out Loud students, I have noted developed pathways or increased abilities.

The brain does not remember well, or play with, vocabulary that just sits on a page. Vocabulary is best remembered through oral practice, in context with other words. I believe the different skull vibrations produced by different words also helps with memory. Once pronounced and practiced, the word becomes known and owned. The route between brain and mouth becomes clearer and quicker.

Metaphor and a host of other rhetorical devices also become familiar structures of oral communication through practice. These inventions, or inversions, or repetitions or juxtaposition of words - these ways of thinking - don’t need names. If they are just practiced aloud these linguistic pathways will be imbedded as well. Who cares if a student can name a metaphor? Can he think a metaphor? Can he create a new one? Does he realize how much information a metaphor can carry? All this is best realized through oral practice.

Antithetical thought, the ability to see both sides of an argument, what some people view as intelligence, can also become familiar through practice. Shakespeare is riddled with antithesis. It was habitual for Shakespeare: he just had to articulate the opposite of everything. Barack Obama does as well. Practicing antithesis also contributes greatly to a lively sense of humor.

Practice is how we get better at everything. What students need are talented teachers to guide them in this practice of Shakespeare Out Loud; teachers who listen well, suggest well, and don’t talk too much. Their students learn most through Shakespeare and practice.

How Dare We?

2009-09-08T14:13:00.001-07:00

Keith Knight (1956 - 2007) was my best friend for 25 years. We met doing Cyrano de Bergerac at the Shaw Festival in 1983, and stayed in constant contact from then on. I created Shakespeare Out Loud with Keith Knight: he was my reading partner. We debated and read together for hundreds of hours over the two years of creating the series. I did the cutting, formatting and noting, but nothing was ever finished until Keith and I had played it aloud and decided it couldn’t be improved. If we disagreed, we debated until we settled. Keith rarely dug his heels in, but when he did, he always proved right. I miss him daily.

Keith knew his Shakespeare extremely well and could almost recite Hamlet. He had researched all the Folio texts and knew the opinions of many scholars on most lines. He also had extensive knowledge about famous stage productions and films. He was the perfect Bard-buddy. Keith never went to university, but as the child of two teachers he was the most knowledgeable person I have ever known. He owned thousands of books and tapes. You could google it, or ask Keith knight.

So, for all those skeptics out there who say, “Who are you to abridge Shakespeare?” Well I wasn’t alone. Just as Shakespeare had his company, I had Keith. Keith is half the reason the texts work so well out loud. They were created as duets. Keith and I just kept reading and listening and refining until they all sounded right.

I learned about Shakespeare and how to listen from many people: from Rudy Shelly at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, from the great actors in those Robin Phillips Shakespearean productions in the early 80s at Stratford, from Peter Ustinov who I was around and on stage with constantly for two runs of King Lear, from Heath Lamberts, whose Cyrano was brilliant. I was also in Brian Bedford’s brilliantly cut Titus Andronicus and Michael Langham’s carefully molded Timon of Athens. I watched what these great artists did with Shakespearean texts and listened to how they sounded. When raising kids and doing mediocre TV for a living, I coached hundreds of students for thousands of hours for theatre and theatre school auditions – all listening. I also did brief time at universities and theatre schools. All this listening made me sure how these texts should sound. Keith and I just finalized them and then I put them on a page so modern youth could quickly understand and practice them.

We dared; we had to dare. If Keith were still alive he would still be daring with me. Teenagers have hated Shakespeare for as long as I can remember: they have hated our greatest dramatic artist. Even I would love to punch my old grade nine teacher, for starting me off on Richard 11. I hated Shakespeare too until I got my first role. Shakespeare Out Loud, when practiced, gives everyone a role, and a solid chance of actually loving Shakespeare. That’s how we dared.

Why Do High School Students Hate Unabridged Shakespeare?

2009-09-08T11:00:00.000-07:00

Students are told that Shakespeare is our greatest writer and dramatist, yet his unabridged texts are too complex to be experienced without constantly referencing the often confusing notes of editors. Students are also told that Shakespeare's plays were written to be heard in the theatre, and yet find it excruciating to speak them aloud in class. They are not given the scripts film actors get, the cut ones that make sense; they are given scripts from 1623. Many students thus develop distaste for Shakespeare that impoverishes their adult lives.

There is a lie imbedded in the teaching of Shakespeare, a lie that causes the hate teenagers feel. The lie is that all of Shakespeare's writing was brilliant, important or even interesting. Some of it is just plain boring. Some of it is laundry lists of events and names, some tedious minutiae about country flowers or deeds. Some of it crosses my eyes. Why not rescue the really nutritious text by chipping away the incomprehensible and archaic that entombs it? Theatre people abridge Shakespeare all the time. Why must only teenagers suffer?

Young people hate unabridged Shakespeare because they can't use it as it was intended - out loud. They hate being unable to realize the expectations of their teachers. They want to act; they want to be brilliant. They hate the lie that unabridged Shakespearean plays are great theatre. Uncut, for them, they are not great theatre. They are a bore and a chore.

Today, Shakespearean plays are always cut for stage and film. Shakespeare Out Loud is abridged for teenagers. They can always explore the unabridged texts, the Folio originals if they like, after they have learned to love the Bard. They will learn this love by playing Shakespeare Out Loud first. They will never do it by silently reading unabridged texts. Until English teachers honestly face this fact, nothing will change: the hate and suffering will continue. The problem lies not with the teachers; the problem AND the solution lies with the texts/scripts the students are given.

Barack Obama and Shakespeare

2009-09-08T10:58:00.000-07:00

I read somewhere that Barack Obama’s favorite literature is Moby Dick and the tragedies of Shakespeare. Listening to and reading all of his major speeches I have come to believe that Shakespeare has had a major influence on him, not only as a public speaker, but in the way he views the world. His personal complex ancestry and journey are also Shakespearean in their richness.

Barack Obama is a leader who does not try to simplify problems; he rather embraces the complexity of issues, seeks consensus and plots solutions that lie in the middle ground. Like Shakespeare he has an
antithetical mind: he just can't help seeing the other side of every problem. Great comics and debaters also think antithetically - it is their gift. He also has a wicked sense of humor, which as president he now must control. He loves getting laughs and the truth of humor is a great teacher. He also relishes language. Were he not a great leader, he might make a fine classical actor.

My point is, if he loves Shakespeare, surely he has practiced Shakespeare out loud. The rhetorical flourishes and the rich, accurate vocabulary that imbue his speeches are not new; he has been practicing for a lifetime. I hear some Shakespearean thought whenever he speaks. I hear it most when he speaks internationally.

These two bits certainly have a Shakespearean spirit in common.

Henry V (From the St Crispian's Day speech)
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today who sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Barack Obama
And every so often, there are moments which call on that fundamental goodness to make this country great again...Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment - this was the time - when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals.

So, if you want your students to develop their thinking and oral communication skills, they can practice Shakespeare out loud, as I am sure Obama has, or practice the speeches of Barack Obama. They both possess accuracy of vocabulary, rich rhetorical devices, habitual use of antithesis, all the while embracing the complexity of the human experience.

Here is a bit from King Lear I am sure Obama knows:

King Lear
Hast thou seen a farmer's dog bark at a beggar? And the creature run from the cur? There thou mightst behold the image of authority - a dog's obeyed in office.
Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand! Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back. Thou hotly lusts to use her in that kind for which thou whip'st her.
The usurer hangs the cozener.
Through tattered clothes small vices do appear; robes and furred gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold, and the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks; arm it in rags a pigmy's straw does pierce it. None does offend - I say none!

Teaching Talent

2009-09-08T10:52:00.001-07:00

Teaching talent with the Shakespeare Out Loud series is the ability to hear thought behind the words of student/actors and give them suggestions to make that thought both clearer and richer. Aside from moving characters about on a stage, it is the same talent as that of the stage director: the ability to enrich and refine the spoken text. This talent completely depends on the teacher’s willingness and ability to hear. If one is to teach the Shakespeare Out Loud series as suggested, the teacher will spend perhaps 35% of every class listening to the students read prepared scenes aloud. The teacher’s ability to improve those readings is their talent.

I listen to the thought, or the lack of thought, behind the spoken words. I give the readers reasons why their characters choose their language. I help them specify and color images they find in the text. I discuss if the language is known or invented. If something is perhaps surprising I might suggest a word be expressed on a higher note in the voice. I constantly listen for wonder in the text – that sort of thing. When teaching and directing, I listen with every ounce of my being. When working a scene, I stop a student/actor whenever I want, instantly. Teaching talent is the instantaneous response to what a one hears. It is not something that can be prepared; it completely depends upon what the student provides. This ability to listen intently, then enrich and refine through suggestion, is the talent. Quite often teachers have this talent and don’t know it; they have never practiced it. Shakespeare Out Loud provided them with the tool to develop this talent.

Even if a teacher has no dramatic flair, the series can still be employed. Some of the students will possess the talent, and if the teacher is generous and insightful, they will allow these students to assume leadership roles. In the Shakespeare Out Loud experience the students learn more from Shakespeare and their peers than they do from their teacher. Talented Shakespeare Out Loud teachers mainly cast, listen and suggest well.

Verse

2009-09-08T10:51:00.000-07:00

Every student is taught that there are two salient points about verse: there are ten beats to a line, and each line consists of alternating stressed and unstressed syllables. There are whole libraries devoted to Shakespearean verse and the supposed hidden meanings of lines with irregular beats or line-lengths. Few scholars just admit that Shakespeare often wrote irregular verse because his characters needed to say those exact words. Like most Shakespearean literary theory, all sorts of opinion cloud the simple fact that Shakespeare wrote for actors. Shakespeare didn’t care what his plays looked like on the page, only what they sounded like from the stage.

I believe Shakespeare employed verse for a few practical reasons. It was a popular structure for writing. It helped actors learn lines and helped ensure they didn’t improvise. It was also economical in that its tight structure enabled four blocks of ink (quartos) per page, of expensive parchment. It was certainly not used to impose some rhythm upon the actor. The natural rhythm of English speech is soft/hard anyway. Shakespeare wanted his actors to sound as natural as possible. He wanted them to “hold a mirror up to nature.”

We teach children as they grow that all sentences begin with a capital. When students see capitals at the beginning of every line of verse they have a very hard time reading through continuous lines of verse. They keep stopping and can’t make sense of the text. The structure of iambic pentameter verse seriously inhibits the comprehension for modern students. The thought-verse of Shakespeare Out Loud liberates them.

Back in my early Stratford days Nicholas Pennell was considered a great verse speaker. He once told a class of students, “When meeting new verse, write it around the walls of a room with no punctuation and no capitals to first find out what the words mean.” His verse speaking was so clear and rich because he didn't follow any prescribed rules; he just made it make sense. Having students concentrate on the supposed rhythm of the text is one of the surest ways to distance them from Shakespeare. Rhythm of speech is always secondary to the thought that inspires the speech. When you start to uncover the thoughts that create the speech you will find your speech attains many speeds. In Shakespeare, thought is always changing, as is speed. I can assure you that world-class professional actors only occasionally mention, and never dwell on, rhythm – they would be giggled out of the rehearsal room. We all know it is about thought!

Verse, schmerse. I’ll take clear, rich, fresh-minted thought any day.

Teacher Zealots

2009-09-08T10:49:00.000-07:00

An Unabridged Shakespeare teacher zealot is someone who disapproves of any other teacher employing any text but unabridged ones. Zealots have a need to rule their schools. Shakespearean zealots, like most zealots don’t really understand their religion. If they did they would realize the plays are drama, and supposed to change with changing audiences. Shakespeare massaged some of his plays for 15 years. Zealots simply dig in their heels at 1623, the First Folio, and refuse to budge. Like most zealots they also give equal weight to every word in their bibles. They never think, maybe a modern audience really doesn’t have to hear that bit. It never crosses their minds. This might sound harsh but zealots are very unimaginative people. Shakespeare lived his whole life with actors, constantly fixing this and that. Zealots would have bored him.

When zealots are the Head of English they might actively block any fellow teachers attempting to purchase the Shakespeare Out Loud series. If the teacher secures texts, they will then be ridiculed. Once the series start working well and the students are excited about their oral accomplishments, the zealot might lose some status and become quite ruthless. All the useless and dull Shakespeare trivia the zealot has been collecting over the years becomes irrelevant when other teachers are crowing about the oral accomplishments and excitement of their Out Loud students.

I have been treated appallingly on several occasions by Shakespearean zealots, individuals who might possess ¼ of my Shakespearean knowledge. It is understandable because zealots wear an unearned mantle and they know it. Pontificating counts for nothing in the theatre; craft does. You talented Shakespeare Out Loud teachers, beware the wrath of zealots. Zealots are not true theatre people or even very good teachers. Zealots want to teach what they supposedly know, not what each student needs to learn.