Shakespeare! Drama! Acting! Writing! Portfolios!
Keep it real in your classroom, home, and life.
The oldest book I own is an 1875 illustrated edition of Shakespeare -- the first illustrated book, by Charles Knight, Volume I of II. I've never had volume II, and the spine — after 145 years — needs repair. I'm think it was originally in my grandparents' library, but I'm sure it was on my mom's bookshelf of impressive books -- Greek classics, Encyclopedia Britannica, a voluminous dictionary, among others.
I've found better translations since then, which informed my teaching of such works, but that love of Shakespeare started early.
My fascination with all things Shakespeare began in 1968, when our family ended up in a fancy campground (water, electricity) on the highway north of Ashland, and my brother and I decided we wanted to see a Shakespeare play at Oregon Shakespeare Festival that night in the outdoor theater.
Mom and Dad and the girls stayed at the campground. I learned about drama in a middle school class and loved it. How could anyone turn down an opportunity to see a play?
It was the comedy "All's Well That Ends Well," and my brother and I stood behind a low hedge to watch the show from the back of the open-air theater. We were in the groundlings section.
I am grateful that the first Shakespeare production I saw was something other than the traditional introduction teens receive. I learned there is always enough time in a Shakespearean comedy for all the ridiculous plot lines, disguises, and escapades to work themselves out while tragedies, in a nutshell, set themselves up the same way, but something is off with the world and there is never enough time for things to work themselves out as they should.
As I've mentioned before, I was fascinated with theater beginning with the Fremont Youth Theater Guild under Paula Carr, where I was the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz, and continued in middle school and high school and college theater productions. The more I learned, the more I loved it. I was always curious and willing to try new things.
Eventually I realized that was my learning style and chose activities you learned by doing – science, music, reading, performing, writing, photography, and producing newspapers. I made my first neighborhood newspaper in third grade on a ditto machine. (I knew my grandpa was a newspaper publisher and editor in the Texas Panhandle before the Great Depression.) My aunt graduated top of her class from University of Missouri at Columbia and worked at Forbes Magazine with Malcolm Forbes.
My freshman English teacher, who was also the librarian, held class in the small library at Cloverdale High School, which was the perfect location to stage our hands-on production of Romeo and Juliet -- the standard gateway teen angst drama typically introduced during freshman year in America. There was a checkout desk at the front of the room, and a reserve room with a door and walls that were only eight feet high -- perfect for the 14-year-old imagination when it came to the balcony scene.
And then one day I took a Shakespeare class at Santa Rosa Junior College, and that professor lit me on fire, and for that I am forever grateful. I knew the culmination of the class was a major project, and as usual I was thinking big -- after all, I had discovered at some point in my teens, probably through sports, if you're going to go down, go down in flames trying your hardest!
That's why I decided to meet with Angus Bowmer to produce a multimedia slide show about The Oregon Shakespeare Festival. I rang his office, he answered the phone, and we set up a date during spring break for an interview and behind-the-scenes tour. I was only 30 miles away from Cloverdale, but I had no car, and no driver's license yet, but I was determined even if it meant I had to spent a day-and-a-half on a bus to get there.
Fortunately, my mom was willing to drive me there and we took in a show, which was a real extravagance for a teacher's family. Angus was warm, congenial, and helpful in my quest. I chose a number of production shots from their slide collection and dutifully wrote a script to accompany the slide show.
He recommended "Shakespeare Aloud" by Edward S. Brubacker, the best book on speaking Shakespeare that I have ever read, and which is essential in teaching Shakespeare performance to others.
I was equally impressed with the other projects students in my class created—one student hand-made the most exquisite period costume for a character in a play; another played a violin solo to accompany a particular scene. An authentic learning experience for all. Hands-on student-centered and selected learning is always the best way to go. I was in my element.
During the summer of 1973, as a result of a gift from my grandparents, I spent two months traveling Europe and North Africa. The pastor at the Congregational Church in Cloverdale, Ralph Veit, who met weekly for Bible study with my brother and I, and his wife Jean Veit, were arranging a tour.
Jean was an experienced tour guide, and we would be joined by another traveler. With only three of us, we were able to stick to our schedule, but improvise when desired. Several times a day, we would retreat to our rooms to write letters home (which people returned to me after the trip), and I would fill up the 152 pages in my red vinyl-covered journal over the course of my travels.
We headed to Stratford-Upon-Avon, and took in a modern production of "As You Like It."
Here's my 19-year-old reflection on the play I saw in my next entry, dates Thursday, June 28, 1973, lightly edited by the 51-years-later me:
“Today we head to Shakespeare country and a day in Stratford-Upon-Avon, Anne Hathaway’s cottage, the Memorial and Globe theatres, Warwick Castle, and Oxford. …. I bought a copy of the London Times and read it on the way up. It took us about two-and-a-half hours to get from Paddington Station to Stratford-Upon-Avon. Our train, the 9:05, arrived late and did not leave until 9:30 a.m. So much for the punctuality of British trains. We bought economy tickets and rode with the commuters. A sign above the seat in reference to a carrying rack above each seat, which struck me as humorous: “Warning: Please mind your head when leaving your seat.”
…. We arrived in Stratford-Upon-Avon at 12 noon, and tool a walk from the terminal to the town, a distance of about a quarter of a mile. …. We took a quick stroll through the city, and over to the theatre box office to see if we could get tickets to “As You Like It.” We bought the tickets a little before 1 p.m. for the 2 p.m. show….
The play “As You Like It” was produced as a modern work. It is the story of lust, love, and a hippie subculture which is striving to break free of the bonds society has placed on them. The generation gap is clearly evident by the duke Frederick’s misunderstanding of his daughter and her wish for friendship with whom she wishes.
My first impression was that Shakespeare was most likely rolling over in his grave. It’s the first Shakespeare play I’ve seen that’s been a musical. Somehow, the simplicity of the play and its adaptability to the stage intrigued me.
I did not think much of the line delivery, although in spots it was good. The stage setting was beautiful, unbelievable, and striking. The scenes changed by the raising and lowering of a stage full of copper posts. They quickly created the forest, ballroom balcony, or what have you. The lighting in the beginning of the new scenes actually made you feel you were there. The stage was dressed in brown, and slanted up to the back and narrowed, giving added perspective. In the middle of the stage was a giant circular rug which highlighted each scene.
I noticed in tonight’s evening newspaper that the critics do no like this modern Shakespeare, and are disgusted with the Shakespeare company.
To me, this only proves how great Shakespeare is; that 350 years later, we can still find meaning for the present, and laughter in modern-day characterizations of kings, jesters, dukes, and princesses. The script was the same, but by changing the clothes and adding a little modern music for context, Shakespeare was brought up to date. That Shakespeare can come through with his message in this particular play is proof of his greatness. What he wrote about centuries ago is still happening today. His wisdom and insight into the problems of yesterday and today still ring true – truly the making of a great man….”
I would eventually go on to earn a fellowship as a Shakespeare Studies Scholar at OSF after I became a teacher. And when OSF opened shop at the other end of the state as Portland Center Stage – I wanted to pay it forward and became a 27-year volunteer, docent tour guide, and volunteer of the year -- until they jettisoned their volunteer program. Some people give money, and some people give time – and Kate and I did both.
As you would expect, after a five-year gig producing the national award-winning biweekly Roseburg Senior H.S. school newspaper, football program, and teaching journalism and photography, I was recruited to lead the journalism program at Wilson High School (now Ida B. Wells-Bennet H.S., named after a journalist!) where we continued winning state and national awards – and had the privilege of teaching freshman English.
I learned that first year that teaching freshman English was the secret recruiting tool for discovering talent and getting them into journalism – and Shakespeare! Romeo and Juliet, to be exact. Pretty much everyone at the time taught it as “literature,” which meant reading it – not performing it. That’s not my style, which is to bring things back to life.
Since junior high school English, we would do one paragraph read-arounds (so those who wouldn’t read it would know the story, I learned later) but the teacher always let me keep reading because I read it like an actor reading a script, which I knew a lot about.
You can guess how I taught Shakespeare – as Drama! It got students out of their comfort zone so they could see it in a new way. I taught them how to perform (I was a speech and debate guy in high school, too), eventually they were on a team that had to present an important scene for the class with some teams evening donning costumes.
I developed a Director’s Notebook Contract how-to-do-it handout that helped them get there. And when drama students were involved, it upped everyone’s game. Hahaha! Classic me – hands-on learner – and I went on to rework every lesson I was required or chose to teach, which makes all the difference in the world, culminating in 16 years at a polytechnic high school in Portland, Oregon.
Then we’d read some famous narrative poetry, analyze it with a selection of how-to-do-it handouts a colleague shared with me or that I wrote myself (along with an open-book quiz for credit), and then they would get to write one of their own using what we learned. They could read it, and then do it!
Each student created a semester portfolio of their best work (because real writers only publish about 10 percent of what they write, one published writer shared with a class through the Writers In The Schools Program.)
If you were not sure of my classical education from my journal entry at the age of 19, my next post will be one I wrote in a master’s level class at University of Oregon where I decided to combine my UO Journalism degree knowledge about review writing with a contemporary analysis of Plato and Socrates through television soap operas. Stay tuned for the surprise ending!
NOTE: For you teachers who are desperately wanting to read and review the “Elements of…” handouts and quizzes I mentioned, here is the link. Paul P. Reuben was delighted with how I used his material in my classroom. John Golden freely shared his work with us Portland, Ore., teachers and eventually wrote an excellent book you should have in your collection. Donald M. Murray’s article is available through JSTOR but I wanted to show you how I :
· made it readable for high school and college students,
· emphasized subheads with boldface type,
· left room on the right for students to write notes,
· and provide the three different types of questions they should be able to answer.