When should I use this exercise? I use this exercise as a way of introducing duologues in the classroom. It may be used to lead into a longer assessment task. You may choose to use the whole duologue included below or just assign a section. I like to give students a couple of lessons to … Continue reading Introducing Duologues: Shakespeare in the Classroom

When should I use this exercise? I use this exercise as a way for students to use Shakesepare’s text to voice as a performer’s tool and skill. The consonants in Shakespeare’s text tend to carry the intellectual ideas and the vowels carry the emotions of the word. This exercise uses this idea to explore more … Continue reading Oh Hell Kite! All? Consonants and Vowels – Macbeth: Shakespeare in the Classroom

When should I use this exercise? I use this exercise as a way for students to use Shakesepare’s text to explore the dramatic elements of mood and ritual. It makes a nice break from working with deep textual analysis. Step by Step Instructions: Step 1: Warm up using a game of ‘Silver Bullet’. This is … Continue reading Mood and Ritual – Macbeth’s Witches: Shakespeare in the Classroom

When should I use this exercise? I use this exercise as a way for students to engage with ensemble work and the text itself. It is designed to help students to understand that longer passages of text do not need to be static on stage. This exercise would follow after some work on iambic pentameter. … Continue reading Climbing Shakespeare’s Ladder of Ideas: Shakespeare in the Classroom

Hamlet, Act III, Scene ii -  Enter a King and a Queen very lovingly; the Queen embracing him, and he her. She kneels, and makes show of protestation unto him. He takes her up, and declines his head upon her neck: lays him down upon a bank of flowers: she, seeing him asleep, leaves him. … Continue reading Hamlet Wordless Play: Shakespeare in the Classroom

When should I use this exercise? I use this exercise as a way for students to explore how Shakespeare moves the audience and the actor from one idea to another. Students could be introduced to the use of punctuation to give clues to the actor. Step by Step Instructions: Step 1: Break the text into … Continue reading Breaking up the Speech – Shylock: Shakespeare in the Classroom