Bardophile

Monday, March 6, 1995

Today, we finished Macbeth in English 4/4H. We ended the play in a flurry with a fury. Usually, I take new volunteers to read at the beginning of each scene, sometimes stopping to act out a moment of the scene, often stopping to discuss an aspect of the language--foreshadowing, symbolism, imagery, scansion, characterization. But in Act Five of the Scottish play, we zoomed through, picking characters once, not breaking between scenes, pausing only to discuss the truly necessary literary aspects.

It was a blast.

Some--and at times like these, I think, most--of my favorite teaching moments have come through the study of Shakespeare. In the late twentieth century, the study of the Bard can be a hazardous undertaking, even with one’s peers, but I’ve never shied away from it.

In my first year of teaching back at Pleasant Valley, I was teaching sophomore English. The generally accepted tenth grade play is Julius Caesar. Now while this play is a classic, filled with great philosophical discourses on the concept of power, it’s not exactly action-packed or funny...in other words, not exactly sophomoric. So I asked my department chair if I could teach The Taming of the Shrew on top of JC.

Not in lieu of...

No. In addition to...

And it was with an old, withered smile (the visual equivalent of a pat on the head) that she let me try it that next year. But, she told me, her voiced graveled by decades of cigarettes, it won’t work. The kids won’t get it. What she didn’t know was that I would do anything, ANYthing, to get them to get it. We would begin the unit with a discussion of what the students wanted to see in the movies they attended and the videos they rented. Sex and Violence. Today. And four hundred years ago. I told them about Taming and Titus, sex and violence for the Elizabethans. We talked about the theatre...its sights, its sounds, its smells. I would jump on a desk (still do [even in my thirties] when introducing the Bard), and have the students pack in like sardines to get a feel for what it must have felt like for the groundlings (shoulder to shoulder, for two hours in the sun, no breeze, no intermission, no chairs...Shakespeare had BETTER be entertaining).

We read the play aloud, scene-by-scene. Twice. Once, stopping constantly, to get the meaning of the words and the speeches and the scenes. Then once more into the breach, getting the students up on their feet if I had to, to get a feel for how the scene played. I found old hats, put the names of characters on them and had the students wear them--which was particularly helpful during the scenes in which characters were in disguise. And, in the end, it worked. They understood...and because they understood Taming, they better understood JC because they had a better grasp of the language.

It all came down to the language. And so, even with my English Tens, we read the play in its original, not the watered down, or the "translated", version. We took it slowly, too slow for some of my colleagues, but not only did we make it through, we made it through with understanding and, for some, an appreciation and a love for the language.

By the time my second year rolled around, I had the English 2 Honors class. While I hated to see Taming go by the side, I knew this was an opportunity to teach two tragedies, side by side, a great chance to better prepare my students for the A.P. exam, two years down the line. Thus, each year I backed JC with another tragedy--one year Macbeth, another Othello, another Lear, then back to Macbeth (always switching to keep myself fresh, not bored)--always teaching the similarities and differences between the tragic heroes. Every year’s Shakespeare unit started with the link to their own tastes and it always ended with their tastes merging with Shakespeare. Most enjoyed Shakespeare because they understood it.

At the end of my second year, I asked my department chair if I could teach the Shakespeare course that was on the books, but never offered. She gave me that smile again, that visual pat on the head, and the same warning. But in the fall of my third year, thirty-nine students were signed up for Shakespeare. Half a year for the Bard. In that inaugural year of the new course, we covered selected sonnets, The Comedy of Errors, Romeo and Juliet, Richard III, and Pericles (all early examples of their respective genres), writing major essays on each of the plays they studied in class; outside of class, they had to read another play (from one of the genres, off a list), on which their final exam essay (comparing it to the discussed play) would be based. Our twice through readings made comprehension and appreciation a given, but it was the in-class acting out of sections that made the class a success.

Not only would we act some scenes out, but we would talk about possible directorial concepts. I told them of the hackneyed Errors concept of setting the play in the circus, under the bigtop (since the play is filled with clowns or at least clownish behavior). I had student volunteers take a scene from the play and create a concept for it. One student set the play in Jamaica, with its inhabitants high on weed, thus allowing for their not-so-bright decisions. Another had as the basis of her direction costuming, use of colors to delineate the brothers. Others did gender switches. One great one was the use of blind servants, explaining much (in that scene at least, though it wouldn’t work for the whole play, of course). It was these directorial concepts that became the basis for our annual presentation of Shakespearean scenes, "A Night with the Bard."

Originally created to pay for the copying costs for the makeshift text for our second-semester class, Modern Literature, "A Night with the Bard" became an animal all its own. We created a production crew, though none of us had put on a play before. A special education student, too shy and without the memory to perform, became our lighting director. Two girls, leaders but not performers, became the executive producer and stage manager. Nine directors came up with scenes, edited their texts, and chose their actors from the class. Everyone had a job. It was going to be an event.

Word was getting out, and some of the faculty were starting to look at me like I was Kurtz in the jungle. Some voiced their concern that I was asking too much of the kids. And I took pride in relaying these messages (but not the messengers) back to the students. They don’t think you can do it. But I do. And they did. We took over a local junior high school, since no high school in our district has a theater facility of its own (all have gyms--fancy that--but the acoustics are shit). We went in on a Sunday, set up the stage and the lights, and ran a tech rehearsal. That night we tore down the stage, only to come back the next afternoon to set it all up for that night’s performance. After the show, we broke down the stage, took down the lights, cleaned the room, and left it better than when we had found it. It was guerrilla theater, in and out.

We had hoped for fifty or so parents. We set up seventy seats. This was a mistake and I should have known better. If you set up too many seats and don’t fill them, when your actors come out and see empty chairs, it kills their performance. The show was to start at seven, the doors opened at six-thirty, and at six-twenty-five, our first customers showed. My parents, ever supportive, and my first wife. No one else. Shit. We are gonna die. We let them in early. Six forty, a trickle started. I was sweating like a pig. I ran backstage to change into my sport coat and to take one look at my prefacing material, the prologue to Henry V, and to wish the actors "break a leg." I met with the directors to quell their fears and to make sure they were ready to introduce their works. And I headed back into the "house."

In five minutes, everything had changed. There must have been forty people there. And a line at the door. Hot Damn. I smiled at the house manager, who asked if we should get more chairs. Don’t get cocky. I told him to wait. By six-fifty-five, we had over eighty people in the house and house crew scrambling for more chairs, even taking some from actors backstage. It was wonderful.

We didn’t start until seven-ten; it wasn’t until then that the flow of audience slowed. We had a hundred people in the house. And I took the stage. I welcomed our audience, and told them that this was students’ night. This was Shakespeare directed, edited, acted, produced, lit, and managed by students. These scenes were experiments, and some would be more successful than others, but all had succeeded because they were being produced. Then I told the audience to imagine a great set, wonderful costumes, and a state-of-the-art theater, because imagination would be the only way they would get it...and I presented the prologue to Henry V. And the show started.

I stood in the back of the house, with the directors. After a director would introduce her/his scene, s/he would come back and stand with me and watch the scene. The first half went well with some strong ideas (including a Richard III opening soliloquy with three Richards, each a different aspect of his personality; a wild Julius Caesar and Calpurnia being greeted by Decius--as played by Ronnie, Nancy, and Ollie, respectively). The big cards were set for the second half. A great A Midsummer Night’s Dream "Pyramus and Thisby" would close, preceded by a solid Petruchio Taming Kate, preceded by what I was sure would be a fine Comedy of Errors piece. The Errors director, Wanda, was less than sure, however. She was nearly in tears when she left the stage to stand at my side. As the lights dimmed for the scene, she looked up at me, panicked, and said, "What if they don’t laugh?"

I smiled. "They will." I hoped. Maybe she was right. Her scene was filled with puns and verbal humor in the first half, before the sure-fire slapstick kicked in. I crossed my hands and fingers behind my back.

The first verbal joke hit. And missed. Not a single laugh. And I could sense Wanda tense beside me. I wanted to reach out and put my arm around her, touch her shoulder, something to allay her fear, but I couldn’t move. I was too scared for her.

The second joke...a laugh. One person. The third...a half dozen people. They were getting in the rhythm of it. A few puns later and the entire crowd was going off like clockwork. Then when the physical stuff went off, so did the audience. Wanda looked up at me again. Her eyes were still wet, but a good kind.

"It worked," she said and jumped up and hugged me.

"Told you." I couldn’t see the stage clearly. My eyes had misted over, too--though I told teasing students later it was because I was laughing too hard.

So I lied.

My first three years had had some great moments. But nothing touched this. This was the best instant of my teaching career. It’s still a highlight.

And the Nights of Shakespeare that followed kept those moments of watching students turn to creators and adults coming, making me feel more than ever that this process-to-product-oriented education was where it’s at, whatever it is. By the end of my time at Pleasant Valley, I had students directing forty-minutes suites from Merry Wives, complete with a false-bottomed Falstaff, an eye-patched Ford, a comically unintelligible barkeep, busty mistresses and truly merry wives; entering drama competitions and pulling awards away from some of the better high school drama programs in L.A.; acting in local community theater productions of Shakespeare; and--most proudly--still producing "A Night with the Bard" after I had left PeeVee (with no teacher having taken over the class in my absence)...proving that the students could and would do it, even without an adult advisor.

Of course, Shakespeare didn’t desert me when I went cross-town to Chumash. My first mainstage drama production here was a twelve-member-cast Romeo and Juliet, with every actor doubling and tripling up on roles (save those playing Romeo, Juliet, and Lady Capulet). It wasn’t completely successful...my mostly underclassman cast was inexperienced on stage, let alone with Shakespearean verse, and I had to replace my Juliet with only four weeks to opening. But it’s still my favorite of the shows done here. We had a kick-ass sword fight, truly humiliating Tybalt, which prompted him to kill Mercutio with Romeo’s dagger, some neat double-casting (Mercutio/Prince, Paris/Tybalt, Friar/Montague) to show some symbolic connections, and an interesting recutting of the final scene in which the Capulets arrive just in time to see their daughter drive the dagger in.

And every year, I teach R&J to the English Nines. And they get it. In the original language. My colleagues are always impressed with how well the standards (the non-college-prep students) know the play. That makes me feel good.

What makes me feel even better is the fact that I know why. Students rise to the occasion if we take the time. They understand and appreciate Shakespeare if we don’t make it a chore. And when they understand Shakespeare, they let him help them to understand their own lives. No one teaches the human condition like the Bard. Not to the Honors level student. Not the CP. Not the Nine.

Even the Nine.