Shakespeare on School Stages

Shakespeare's work is a creative playground for directors and actors.

I wrote that about Joel Coen's The Tragedy of Macbeth (see Macbeth for the Fun of It 01/2022), but it's true at school, too: I write from experience teaching drama in high school and middle school for 40 years.

Shakespeare offers a few advantages to school drama teachers. You have no royalty payments, you can access free scripts online, and you get lots of flexibility to cast roles for everyone in your club or class. With freedom to edit and with centuries' precedents for updates and reinterpretations, you can play to the interests and strengths of your students, whether they're 11 or 17.

Updating the Material
While I cut Shakespeare's scenes short, I never changed any words except the most obscure ones. But my actors and I enjoyed figuring out ways to transplant the stories to other times and locales.

• Setting Macbeth in the near-future, our 8th grade club made the title character a cyborg. Why? First, because it's cool! Then, making him more metallic as the play progressed was a visual analog for the character's decreasing humanity. We found modern-day analogs for other characters, too. Lady Macbeth was playing tennis at the country club when we first saw her. For her, being queen was all about being a celebrity: that was the young actor's idea. We used the school's big-screen TV to make the witches into TV pundits, and we simulated security camera footage to show the trees of Birnam Forest marching up the hill towards the castle.
• When we did Taming of the Shrew in the late-80s, Kate dressed like Cyndi Lauper, while her younger sister was the preppie cheerleader. Their music teacher was a country-western guitarist; the Latin teacher was modeled on our school's Latin teacher. Petruchio and his crew resided on a yacht. He arrived at the wedding, late, dressed (underdressed) like Rambo. I should've known better than to trust the 8th grade boys who asked if Jimmy Buffett would be okay for the music at the party scene in the final act. As Petruchio and Kate happily exited to their long-delayed honeymoon, we heard "Why Don't We Get Drunk and Screw?" Well, it certainly did fit the situation.
  
• We did two of Shakespeare's most popular comedies as 1920s musicals. That gave a dozen 6th grade girls roles as tap-dancing chorines, and gave student musicians a place on stage in costume to be the jazz combo. I wrote 20s-style music for songs in Midsummer Night's Dream, and made Twelfth Night a jukebox musical of early Gershwin songs. Since I made Duke Orsino a Broadway producer, we called the show First Night. Members of "his" theatre company sang songs that expressed the feelings of the dramatic leads. For instance, when young Viola is feeling helpless and alone, her double the Ingenue sang "Someone to Watch Over Me."
• Sixth graders did Julius Caesar ca. 1989 in the school library, where we used the library's heavy TV on rollers to show videotape of General Caesar arriving by jet while TV reporter "Flavia Octavia" interviewed his fans at the airport. Then Caesar and his entourage entered in fatigues and sunglasses: the actors loved it. Updating Shakespeare multiplies opportunities for girls to play big roles as soldiers, senators, doctors, reporters, etc.

Even when my students and I didn't update Shakespeare, we did make our interpretations reflective of the young actors' own feelings.

• When I asked Thomas, a high school senior who had proven himself in many supporting roles, which part he wanted in Twelfth Night, I figured he'd go for one of the comic roles. Instead, he empathized with "Malvolio" for being conscientious, scrupulously honest, and under-appreciated. His belief in the character's basic goodness showed. We had great performances in the other roles, but the injustice done to Malvolio brought pain into the comedy.

• Some of those same actors presented Hamlet in rep with Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Bill, a senior who had played many roles on our stage, was eager to tackle the Prince. Bill told me that he saw the prince, not as a crazed or vengeful man, but a truth-teller and healer, a young man of faith seeking to redeem a sick and sinful situation. I edited and directed the show accordingly (and got it down to 90 minutes!).
• My very first Shakespeare production as director was The Tempest, performed on the tiny stage that our Episcopal middle school used for chapel services. We shaped the show for Episcopalian sensibilities. For a set, we hung images of nature that were mosaics in the manner of stained glass. Prospero was robed like a priest. The banquet in the middle of the play was staged as communion with a procession of spirits robed as acolytes who set the table as an altar with candles, bread, and goblets. When the guilty characters knelt to eat, Ariel commanded them to go, acknowledge their sins, and repent (cf. Psalm 24-25, "Let the table before them be a trap..."). While buddies John and Thomas clowned around in the comic subplot, student actor Peter brought out the dignity and anger of "Caliban."

[Images are my photo collages of middle-school and upper-school productions I directed at St. Andrew's Episcopal School from photos taken between 1983 and 1998. Actors include some people I've seen on Facebook: Emily Levin née Powell, Bill Hamilton, Leigh Ann Evans, Thomas Crockett, Brian Griffin, Caldwell Collins, Emily Vance. The Tempest pre-dated my practice of making photo collages. ]

[My students from St. Andrew's joined me for many summer seasons at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. Read more (09/2021)]