The North Face of Shakespeare
Activities for Teaching the Plays

A wealth of expert advice and practical ideas for teaching the plays.

James Stredder (Author)

9780521756365, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 9 July 2009

306 pages
22.7 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.49 kg

The North Face of Shakespeare argues that successful active work arises directly from the extraordinary dramatic power of Shakespeare's writing - from its language and poetry and its use of narrative and character. The book invites teachers and drama practitioners to think of their classroom as a stage, with their students as both actors and audience. It proposes that the text can be presented as drama - whether in quite simple ways sitting at desks or in open space in the classroom or workshop, the text can be spoken and performed by every learner in the room. The aim is for students to take away an engaged and secure understanding of that text to use in their own reading and study.

Introduction
Using this book
The organisation and content of the eight chapters
Developing the use of drama to teach Shakespeare
The teacher's autonomy
Section 1. Active Teaching: 1. Why use active methods to teach the plays? The North Face of Shakespeare
The problem of monumentalism
The teacher repositioned: 'Shakespeare shared'
Starting active work
Drama workshops
The learner and the text at the centre
Active Shakespeare and independent learning
Back to the art of teaching - and student achievement
2. Practical work and drama workshops
The classroom as stage: activities in conventional teaching sessions
Safety: physical and emotional
Different needs and abilities
Workshop practices
Workshop objectives and the use of warm-ups and preparation exercises
Workshop planning: an example of a language workshop - 'Macbeth's soliloquies'
The origins of the workshop activities in the following chapters
Section 2. Activities for Teaching Shakespeare's Plays: 3. Group formation activities
Group formation
Getting started
4. Drama games: using games in the Shakespeare workshop
5. Drama exercises: using drama exercises in the Shakespeare workshop
6. Shakespeare's language: the aims of language work
Shakespeare's language gives 'the motive and the cue' for action
Discourse and rhetoric as sources of dramatic energy and action
Language ownership and familiarity through workshops
Teaching approaches: listen and speak, active reading, learn and act
7. Narrative in Shakespeare: harnessing the power of narrative's theatricality
The nature of Shakespeare's narratives
Teaching approaches: Structural approaches, dynamic approaches, investigative approaches
8. Character in Shakespeare: changing ideas about character in drama
Characters and their speech utterances
Role differentiated from character
Character and setting
Mise en scene
Teaching approaches: personal encounters with roles
Roles in social settings
Roles in action in the narrative
Notes
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Educational: English literature [YQE]