“The Arts Connect” Conference Continues: Part XIX – Jeri Pitcher
October 21, 2009Workshop: Bringing Shakespeare’s Language to Life – by Jason Bannister
Jeri Pitcher
I attended the Bringing Shakespeare’s Language to Life session. It was facilitated by Jeri Pitcher, the Associate Artistic Director of the Theater at Monmouth.
She showed our small group different exercises you can do with your class if you are teaching a unit on Shakespeare. One of the exercises was Shakespearean Insults. This showed a fun way to introduce students to the language of Shakespeare. Another exercise, called Creating Shakespeare’s World, compared and contrasted a theater experience now to Elizabethan times. There were other exercises as well, all leading up to scene work on a Shakespeare text. Part of the session focused on a discussion of how to specifically implement these exercises into our classrooms.
I will be teaching a unit on A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the next few months and this session gave me some great ideas to include. I would recommend this session for anyone interested in teaching Shakespeare.
Leave a Reply