The pedagogy of watching Shakespeare
Submitted by:
Bethan-Jane Marshall
Abstract:
The pedagogy of acting out Shakespeare has been extensive. Less work has been done on how students learn through spectatorship (Escolme, 2005; Aebischer, 2020) . This paper will consider all within the current context of Shakespeare teaching in schools in England. Using grounded research (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) it will include work undertaken on a schools National Theatre production of Macbeth, as well as classroom-based, action research, using a variety of digital performances of Shakespeare plays. The students were aged between 15 and 18 and were studying for national exams in state funded schools. All had had exposure to Shakespeare already in earlier years. One was undertaken as part of a PhD (studying the NT production), the other as action research on a scheme of work introduced as part of the school's A-level syllabus (exams for 18 year olds). Both find means of extending student knowledge in unexpected ways through encountering interpretations of Shakespeare that the students had not considered. In reflecting on the practice of watching Shakespeare in an educational context- both at the theatre and in the classroom- this paper hopes to offer suggestions for how teachers might re-think the ways in which they present Shakespeare performed to their students particularly as a powerful way of building personal and critical responses to the plays.