4 Activities That Enhance Shakespeare’s Plays

A variety of engaging strategies allow teachers to guide students toward a deeper understanding of Shakespeare’s work.

By Steffannie Alter

Edutopia

July 3, 2024

In the article "4 Activities That Enhance Shakespeare’s Plays" by Steffannie Alter, published on July 3, 2024, the author shares innovative strategies to help educators engage students with Shakespeare’s work. Alter emphasizes the importance of balancing appreciation for Shakespeare’s historical context with creative reinterpretations to make his plays accessible and enjoyable for students.

Illustration by Michael Keany/AI

Strategy 1: Designing Symbolic Tattoos

This one-period activity helps students explore indirect characterization and symbolism in Shakespeare’s plays. Students are instructed to draw a symbolic tattoo for a character and write a paragraph explaining how the design represents the character’s traits and story arc. This exercise encourages students to think critically about the character’s personality, relationships, and symbolic elements. By combining creativity with textual analysis, students gain a deeper understanding of the characters and the play.

Strategy 2: Writing Diary Entries

To make Shakespeare’s language more relatable, Alter uses a creative writing activity where students write a series of three diary entries from a character’s perspective. These entries should reflect the character’s evolving thoughts, feelings, and experiences, including events not explicitly mentioned in the play. This task helps students internalize the character’s voice and motivations while practicing Shakespearean syntax and wording. The activity fosters creativity and comprehension, encouraging students to explore the character’s inner life.

Strategy 3: Changing Performance Tactics

Based on Stanislavski’s acting technique, this strategy involves students performing scenes using different “tactics” or action verbs to achieve their character’s objectives. For instance, in the “Get thee to a nunnery” scene from Hamlet, one student may play Hamlet with the tactic “to antagonize,” while another plays Ophelia with the tactic “to seduce.” By rotating through various tactics, students experiment with tone, body language, and facial expressions, leading to discussions about character motives and interpretations. This activity makes Shakespeare’s language more dynamic and accessible, allowing students to actively engage with the text.

Strategy 4: Comparing Interpretations

Comparing different film versions of the same scene helps students understand how directorial and actor choices influence a play’s interpretation. Alter uses the “Battle of Wits” scene from Much Ado About Nothing, showing versions directed by Joss Whedon, Kenneth Branagh, Christopher Luscombe, Kenny Leon, and Josie Rourke. Students analyze the differences in each interpretation and discuss how these choices affect the characters, relationships, and themes. This exercise reinforces that there is no single “right” way to perform Shakespeare, highlighting the plays’ adaptability and relevance.

Conclusion: Empowering Student Creativity

Alter concludes by encouraging students to reinterpret and perform their own version of a Shakespeare scene for their final project. Through activities that showcase the diverse ways Shakespeare can be interpreted and performed, students gain confidence in their ability to engage with and build on Shakespeare’s legacy. These strategies not only deepen students’ understanding of the plays but also foster a love for Shakespeare’s work through active, creative participation.

Source: Steffannie Alter, “4 Activities That Enhance Shakespeare’s Plays,” Edutopia, July 3, 2024. Available at Edutopia.

Original Article

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Prepared with the assistance of AI software

OpenAI. (2024). ChatGPT (4) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com