Keep Shakespeare in the Curriculum (Even If You Hate Him)

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Back to school

With school starting up again, I’ve been thinking a lot about issues in teaching and learning. My thoughts keep returning to Dana Dusbiber, the high school teacher from Sacramento who suggested back in June that we should remove Shakespeare from the English curriculum. Her opinion, published in the Washington Post, naturally riled the Shakespeare-loving community, which circled its wagons in defense of the Bard. Sadly, many of the responses focused on attacking Dusbiber personally, calling her (among other things) ignorant, illiterate, and racist. I don’t know Dusbiber or her students, but what I see in her opinion isn’t an ignorant, illiterate racist but a veteran teacher searching for the best ways to educate her students. She shows passion for her work and for the well-being of her students.

She is, however, wrong.

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(Not) Romeo and Juliet: Revisited

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Muddy Reflection

In my last post, I (kind of) reviewed the latest film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, written by Julian Fellowes and directed by Carlo Carlei. Since then, the film—and the play on which it is based—has been haunting me. I simply can’t pull my mind away from Romeo and Juliet for long. I awoke this morning, in fact, with the faint memory of performing in and/or directing a production in my dreams.

I am sad to report that upon further review, the call on the field stands: the Carlei/Fellowes Romeo and Juliet remains an exercise in condescension. Usually, if I’m still pondering a work long after seeing it, it means it has either profoundly impacted my life or inspired me to reconsider my initial reaction. Part of me was hoping time would help me see more redeeming qualities in the film, but if that’s to be the case, one week has not been long enough.

I have, however, been ruminating on the film’s usefulness. In doing so, I have come to the tentative conclusion that I am glad the film was made.

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Film Non-Review: Romeo and Juliet (2013)

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Full Disclosure

I adore Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Like so many others, I first read it as a high school freshman. It was my first exposure to Shakespeare (the first I remember, anyway) and reading it, unbeknownst to me at the time, would set me on my professional journey.

I think I liked Shakespeare back then because that’s what I was supposed to like. It was as though I earned smart, artsy girl street cred by being a Shakespeare fan. The words were so pretty, and I didn’t find them nearly as difficult as I was led to believe I would, so I felt pretty good about myself.

As time and my Shakespearean education went on, I grew to appreciate the plays for what they are instead of how they make me look. I’m no longer a blind-faith fangirl. With the help of some excellent professors and performance opportunities, I have learned to value the text* for what it says about the characters, their motivations, their world, their lives.

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It’s not the size that counts

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The Woman Problem?

Recently, The Guardian published a story by Vanessa Thorpe that revolved around a question that, in a way, affects my entire life: Did Shakespeare sell women short? Upon reading it, I had so much to say about the subject that I finally got this blog up and running.

I am a woman who has dedicated most of her adult life to the study and performance of Shakespeare’s plays. As such, I have been lucky enough to play some of the most incredible female roles ever written, including As You Like It‘s Rosalind, The Taming of the Shrew‘s Katherine, and the first tetralogy’s Queen Margaret in a brilliant conflation called Queen Margaret: Tiger’s Heart Wrapped in a Woman’s Hide. With such roles, I never once had to question whether I was playing a fully-formed character. And as a director of Shakespeare, I never once had to help one of my actresses invent some sort of internal life to make up for an underwritten role.

That’s one reason why putting Shakespeare’s plays on stage is among the greatest pleasures of my professional life.

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