Performing Shakespeare: A Way To Learn

Foreward

by Kristin Linklater

Kristin Linklater is the author of Freeing the Natural Voice and Freeing Shakespeare’s Voice. The Linklater technique is one of the leading methodologies of voice training in the theatre today. A co-founder of Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, MA, she has taught at New York University Graduate Theatre Program and Emerson college and is currently Professor of Theatre Arts at Columbia University.

A Way to Learn is the subtitle of Robert Sugarman’s book Performing Shakespeare. This suggests that in performing Shakespeare’s plays young people may find out more than their classroom education offers. Strangely, in a culture that is flooded by video games, reality TV and the ever-expanding computer and electronic entertainment universe, there is abundant anecdotal evidence of the unique educational and healing power of Shakespeare. Shakespeare performed, enacted, spoken. Wherever there are programs that bring the experience of playing Shakespeare into schools there are stories of improved learning focus, diminished delinquencies and enhanced appreciation of life potential. Although there is currently little institutional recognition of these valuable additions to the learning process, I believe that the anecdotal evidence will eventually influence educational policies and integrated support will emerge.

It is not only in schools that Shakespeare’s plays wreak small and larger miracles without adequate acknowledgement. Shakespeare programs in prisons and juvenile detention centers are woefully under-valued and under-supported in relation to the enlightenment they bring to rehabilitation efforts. How does this playwright from another time and another place, bearing the stigma of elitist academia, speaking in a hard, old, almost foreign tongue, maintain his practical and effective power across socio-economic and educational boundaries? Certainly part of his power comes from archetypal stories that need to be told over and over again because humanity doesn’t change very much and we human beings need to tell and re-tell our representative tales: of woes, of loves, hates and jealousies, of weakness and ambition, of occasional redemptions and manifold punishments, of forgiveness and transformation. But it is the language in which these tales are told that makes the miracles happen. The root of the word ‘language’ is the same as for ‘tongue.’ It’s a hard but lively old tongue that tells these tales. And it is our mother-tongue. When children (of any age) wrap their tongues around Shakespeare’s language their brains awaken to a tough mother-love that says “work hard, but play as hard as you work.” Words challenge the imaginations and imagination engenders action. That is how actors make plays. When children eat these words and digest them they create rich nutrition for their imaginations; and then they find their own words to explain their own lives and they can invent their futures with a vocabulary to support their experiences and their dreams. Without a language to describe their largest hopes children dwindle into a depleted mental state, and, all too often, mere bottom-line subsistence.

There are probably hundreds of thousands of Shakespeare lovers in this country who want to pass on their passion to young people and share with them the joy that has uplifted their lives. But how are they to go about it? I would suggest that almost anywhere in the country there are enough ”bardolators” to form a formidably persuasive action group that could infiltrate and transform a local community in one way or another through Shakespeare’s plays either read aloud or performed. But, it is certainly true that enthusiasm is not enough. Some forms of expertise, some formulae, some methods of approach seem essential to turn passion into practice Robert Sugarman has identified four programs, out of many that are successful, to illustrate four very different ways in which Shakespeare can be brought to vibrant life within or around (and not necessarily with curricular support) the school system. Here are strategies and tactics, points of view and down-to-earth accounts of how personal commitment (perhaps with a touch of fanaticism) can surmount all sorts of obstacles and bring profound experiences of creativity and artistic satisfaction into the lives of young people.

Lois Burdett says “I don’t concentrate on performance. What I feel is most important is the writing. Then the performance comes… I use Shakespeare as a means to an end… When we were studying The Winter’s Tale, one little girl wrote, ‘Leontes’ eyes were like overheated flames, his cheeks were red as a lobster, grabbing the scroll like a child with no manners, he screamed ‘Lies, lies’. A hush fell over the crowd. We all wept like wilting flowers. Hermione’s brows slid down to her eyes.” Stephen Haff, working with inner city Brooklyn teenagers says “Rewriting the script is their way of making it their own. And they retitled it Hamlet, Prince of Brooklyn….They are a feisty group and rehearsals aren’t always easy. I chose these kids because they are feisty…It’s a matter not of telling them ‘Don’t do that.’ But saying ‘How angry you are right now. Use that.’ Reminding them that emotions are very good - they‘re very human. It’s the choices you make about how to use them.’” Rafe Esquith, working with fourth and fifth graders says “They are a team. And they function well together. People are amazed when they come to the show with all the kids onstage, backstage and behind the scenes and there are no adults at all…We have a real kickass rock and roll band and we do 10 to 15 songs during the Shakespeare play…We have about 30 songs for Hamlet…we’ll get it down to 12…when you have sixty or more kids in a play…I don’t want to have [them] spending all their time holding a spear.” Shakespeare & Company’s Kevin Coleman says, “You don’t have to be able to read to do Shakespeare. We find that the kid who can’t read memorizes faster than anyone…When that kid gets up to play Romeo, there’s another kid behind him who can read who feeds him a line at a time…The Romeo takes it in from hearing it.” The four very different approaches stimulate ideas for other strategies and tactics, exercises and experiments.

From Robert Sugarman’s own extensive background in theatre comes an encouraging voice that suggests ways to move through the difficulties of introducing Shakespeare performance to young people and arrive at the immense satisfaction of seeing the results. In his book he has assembled reports, strategies and tools that can help make passionate bardolatry practical and effective.