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The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 13.2477  Monday, 30 December 2002

[1]     From:   Al Magary <al@magary.com>
        Date:   Wednesday, 25 Dec 2002 21:45:18 -0800
        Subj:   "Shakespeare in a Box

[2]     From:   Richard Burt <burt@english.umass.edu>
        Date:   Friday, 27 Dec 2002 09:33:18 -0500
        Subj:   Shakespeare Rides the Wild Range--LA Times review of As Ya Like
It . . . Pardner

[3]     From:   Nora Kreimer <norakreimer@fibertel.com.ar>
        Date:   Sunday, 29 Dec 2002 22:35:58 -0300
        Subj:   The Great Novelists Not Fit For Duty in This War of Words


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Al Magary <al@magary.com>
Date:           Wednesday, 25 Dec 2002 21:45:18 -0800
Subject:        "Shakespeare in a Box"

Shakespeare's Plays, Trimmed to Living Room Size
By William S. Niederkorn

New York Times, December 26, 2002

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/25/arts/theater/25SHAK.html

Obscured by a 400-year culture gap in vocabulary, grammar and verse,
Shakespeare's plays can be a daunting undertaking for beginners. What
charm can "melt the darkness so their rising senses begin to chase the
ignorant fumes that mantle their clearer reason?"

Carl Martin was racking his brain on this problem in 1991 while teaching
in a public school in New Orleans and came up with the idea of adapting
"Hamlet" for his students, using slang "to ease the anguish of a
torturing hour." So when Claudius said, " 'Tis sweet and commendable in
your nature, Hamlet, to give these mourning duties to your father," Mr.
Martin's Hamlet replied, "Boot up or shut up!"

But Shakespeare's own language provided a coup de th??tre, Mr.  Martin
says, when his students performed his 20-minute version of the play and
an eighth grader delivered Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy
verbatim. "That was the beginning of my commitment to the pedagogical
principle that it's really important to play Shakespeare to feel like
you understand it," Mr. Martin said Friday.

That commitment continued over a decade of teaching experiments and
refinements and led to Shakespeare in a Box. Called a game and presented
with game-like packaging, it is not a game at all but a kit for a
do-it-yourself production of a Shakespearean play ready for performance
in living rooms across America.

[Coninuted]

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Richard Burt <burt@english.umass.edu>
Date:           Friday, 27 Dec 2002 09:33:18 -0500
Subject:        Shakespeare Rides the Wild Range--LA Times review of As Ya
Like It . . . Pardner

http://www.calendarlive.com/stage/cl-et-stage27dec27.story

Shakespeare rides the wild range

Many a casual punster might have been content with a comic riff on John
Wayne as the Duke in "As You Like It," but it took a true devotee of the
genre to map western movie icons onto every character in Shakespeare's
classic comedy.

[Continued]

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Nora Kreimer <norakreimer@fibertel.com.ar>
Date:           Sunday, 29 Dec 2002 22:35:58 -0300
Subject:        The Great Novelists Not Fit For Duty in This War of Words

This is the first paragraph of a rather rambling article. Interesting,
though, that the Pentagon should think of Shakespeare among others to
improve soldiers' minds as they go to war.

Regards
N.

Opinion
December 28, 2002

The Great Novelists Not Fit For Duty in This War of Words
Ben Macintyre

War is Heller. It is also Tolstoy, Owen, Vonnegut and Hemingway, among
many others. But according to the Pentagon, war - at least the impending
war in Iraq - is Shakespeare, the 5th-century BC Chinese military
strategist Sun Tzu and two modern bestsellers about heroism and wartime
correspondence. Before Christmas the US Defence Department began
distributing free, pocket-sized copies of these books to its troops, to
ensure that soldiers are improving their minds while removing Saddam.
More than 100,000 copies have been given away so far.

_______________________________________________________________
S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List
Hardy M. Cook, editor@shaksper.net
The S H A K S P E R Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net>

DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the
opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the
editor assumes no responsibility for them.

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