Using Shakespeare to Address Societal Problems

Stephens uses Shakespeare to address societal problems. Teaching William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet's relevance to struggling readers is challenging. Like Kelly Gallagher's argument that struggling writers do not do enough writing, she thinks struggling readers suffer from similar failures: teachers do not do enough reading with students. Like Gallagher, she believes it is best to focus on what teachers can control. So, when she was required to teach Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to her ninth graders last year, she paused to reflect on undertaking this task with struggling readers while making the text accessible and meaningful. Here she describes her attempt to meet this task.

Jitney by August Wilson, and: Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare (review)

See PDF ] Jitney, part of Wilson's American Century Cycle exploring African American life in each decade of the twentieth century, directly explores notions of community through its depiction of a group of jitney drivers, men who use their own vehicles to provide rides to those in need of them. While it initially seemed incongruous to see Jitney with its realistic interior setting in an outdoor performance venue, the sense of strangeness faded quickly as the production began. [...]performing outside a conventional theatre space made the production viable in a city in which the Delta variant precipitated a rapid rise in COVID-19 cases during its run. During the exorcism scene, for instance, Sir Toby drenched Malvolio with liquid sprayed from a large plastic container labeled "Holy Water," and Feste performed a toe-tapping number, "Devil Be Gone," backed by an enthusiastic red-robed gospel choir.

Journeying to the Underworld: Ghosts and Grief in Autobiographical Writing

Still in the midst of the COVID- 19 pandemic, many had spent months flip-flopping between inperson and online classes since Mar 2020. Schaufele felt that their learning had become stale, claustrophobic, and strained, forced as they were to communicate through pixel and sound. To complicate matters, their students and staff had suffered a difficult and personal loss during the intervening summer months. Several of his students were still very much grieving the death of a fellow student. Now, as they were back together in person for the 2021-22 academic year, a palpable feeling of loss pervaded their classroom and school community. Because grief and its associated losses had emerged so strongly during this semester (and throughout the pandemic more generally), he sought to open up a space where they might explore and "shar[e] emotions surrounding grief in ethical ways". The experience of grief can be profoundly personal and uniquely connected to a person's memories.

Sounding the Polyphonic Cacophony of Macbeth with a Young Jozi Ensemble

Digital theatre-making initiatives that had emerged during Covid-19 lockdowns urged an interrogation of the languages of live theatre when, in South Africa, as the public arena reopened and social interaction resumed, reconfigured notions of theatre-making seemed apt. Reformulating and reimagining the operations of the medium, and the processes through which stage productions evolve, not only applied aspects of successful digital theatre but also aligned with the ideological imperatives of decolonisation. The Joburg Theatre Youth Development Programme production of Macbeth (2021) offered an opportunity to explore soundscape through the interplay of spoken word and non-semantic avian and animal calls. As a point of entry to staging the play, ensemble-based improvisation around developing a soundscape led to a more considered mapping of ornithological images, their connotations and theatrical efficacy. Extended play in generating birdcalls was instrumental in building performers' confidence in transposition and spontaneous translation from English to vernacular languages to give this rendition of Macbeth an edgy, contemporary, local tone. This article documents and addresses the rehearsal processes and some outcomes of the approach that was adopted.

DO AMOR E OUTRAS MORTES: RELENDO ROMEU E JULIETA EM TEMPOS DE PANDEMIA

O artigo propoe uma releitura a luz da pandemia da covid-19 da peça Romeu e Julieta, de William Shakespeare, escrita entre 1591 e 1595. Contextualiza-se a peça a partir da bibliografia que historiciza os impactos da pandemia da peste bubônica no século XVI, destacando a nascente política sanitaria que recomendava restrições de circulaçao, com controle do Estado, e os impactos que ela causou na vida social, económica e política. A partir disso, sustenta-se a ideia de que a peça pode ser lida como uma crítica social cínica.Alternate :The article proposes a reinterpretation in the light of the covid-19 pandemic of the play Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare, written between 1591 and 1595. The piece is contextualized from the bibliography that historicizes the impacts of the bubonic plague pandemic in the 16 th century, highlighting the nascent health policy that recommended circulation restrictions, with State control, and the impacts it caused on social, economic and political aspects of human life. The article sustains the idea that the play can be read as a cynical social criticism is supported.

Reflections on Online Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Vignettes from an Indian Classroom

[...]more often than not, teachers had little or no means of accessing the visual cues of students' reactions and modulating the tone of the discussion accordingly. Despite my personal dislike for many aspects of the film, I believed it would serve as a useful point of discussion about issues such as the appropriateness of the timing of the film's release, the film's conceptions of feminism as a rabid movement of mob-justice, and issues concerning sexual harassment. Some argued that the casting couch was to blame, and yet others mentioned in their essays that it was unfortunate that justice was not always served, but that the law was all we had.