|
|
|
|
Articles
|
|
|
Articles |
Making Shakespeare AccessibleDateline: 5th September, 1999 Back in January listeners to BBC Radio 4 voted Shakespeare their "Man of the Millennium". In 1998 American academic Howard Bloom put forward the idea that Shakespeare had invented what we now call the "human". Shakespeare is probably the most produced playwright in the world: I doubt if a week goes by but at least one of his plays is being performed somewhere in the world - and probably somewhere in this country. One of the year's hit films (although not perhaps in the Star Wars class!) was Shakespeare in Love. Shakespeare is, arguably, the greatest playwright the world has ever known, admired and performed throughout the world. "Doing" Shakespeare Why is it, then, that, if you ask the average man in the street in the UK about Shakespeare, he'll say he doesn't like him - or worse, he hates him? And why does he hate him? Simply because he was forced to "do" Shakespeare at school, and "doing" Shakespeare consisted of reading a play around the class, with the teacher explaining every other word, which became exceedingly boring. And so we get the equation "Shakespeare=boredom" firmly fixed in so many people's minds. Is it any wonder, then, that those who really do appreciate Shakespeare feel the need to "make him accessible"? This modern concern began in education, with Rex Gibson's Shakespeare in Schools project back in the eighties. Gibson and his co-workers devised all manner of "fun" exercises, usually focusing on the more exciting or interesting bits of his plays. Some exercises were written, some graphic, some practical. And it worked - at least to some degree. Make it simple But let us be strictly truthful here: Gibson was not the first to try to make Shakespeare accessible. For that we have to go back to the nineteenth century and Charles and Mary Lamb's Little Tales from Shakespeare, an attempt to introduce the plays to children, to give them an idea of the story so that, when they came to approach the plays themselves, they had some understanding of them already. The modern equivalent is probably the BBC2 Animated Shakespeare, shortened and simplified versions of the plays, using various forms of animation. Shakespeare 4 Kidz, a touring company, does this in theatrical terms, aiming their shows at junior schools and producing versions which can be performed by junior kids. In them the language is simplified to the level which young kids can understand. In addition the writers add songs with simple, catchy tunes at appropriate points, to help get across important points in the action. It does work, and I can vouch for this from personal experience of their version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. I saw it performed in Edinburgh last year and was mightily impressed, so much so that I got their permission to use part of the play in November '98 for my drama group at school to tour to our local primary schools. They now have a version of Romeo and Juliet which I had hoped to see in Edinburgh this year, but unfortunately the performance I booked to see was cancelled because of illness in the cast. The equivalent for kids at secondary level is the English Shakespeare Company's education section, the Shakespeare Experience. These are versions of the chosen play shortened to about 70 minutes and presented in a very modern style (I loved the idea of Benvolio with a skateboard!), but without any simplification of the language. However to help with the language and other difficulties, the performance is preceded by an "animated lecture", in which the director takes the audience through different interpretations of the key scenes, moving his actors around like chess pieces! Another idea which works well. Modernised plays But what if you're not in the UK, or in a place where neither S4K or ESC appear? South African poet and academic (a former Professor of English at the University of Bophuthatswana) Walter Saunders has produced modernised and slightly abridged versions of a number of the plays, aimed at schools. What he has done is to bring the language up to date, wherever the meaning is not clear, but has retained the metre. For example, Juliet's famous balcony speech goes like this: O Romeo, Romeo, why are you Romeo? OK, it doesn't sound quite right. It's lost something in the translation. But it isn't intended to be a replacement for Shakespeare's words, but a starter - an introduction which will develop an initial enthusiasm and which will lead on eventually to the actual words. A foreign language? I can imagine the purists getting quite het up about this. In fact, I would have done so just a year ago, but more and more I am coming to realise that if Shakespeare is not to be an esoteric interest for an intellectual/academic minority, then we need something like this to get kids interested. The clincher, as far as I am concerned, is that ther majority of us don't watch an Ibsen play in the orginal Norwegian, nor a Chekhov in Russian, nor a Sophocles in the Greek of Ancient Athens. For kids - and, let's be honest, for the majority of people nowadays - Shakespeare's English is almost a foreign language. There's a parallel which is even closer than citing Ibsen, Chekhov et al.: the King James Bible, the so-called "Authorised Version". No one can deny the power of its language: it's an absolute joy to read aloud - as the one who gets the job every year of organising our school's Christmas Carol Service, I always put myself down to read the opening of Gospel of St John, and I always insist on the AV! But how often is the AV used in churches nowadays? Very infrequently: the New English Bible is the most common, because its language is both appropriate and meaningful to modern-day speakers of the language. If we do it for the Bible, why not for Shakespeare? - especially when we use the modernised texts, whether Walter Saunders' or Shakespeare 4 Kidz', which are intended as first steps. And really, even if some people don't go beyond these first steps, at least they have experienced something of Shakespeare and understood it, rather than being put off for life by sheer boredom! Articles Indices: |
|
|