Are you a teacher or school learner dreading the prospect of tackling Othello this year? Fear no more; Shakespeare ZA is here to help! Veteran educator, publisher and thespian Robin Malan has developed a tool to spur classroom discussions and to help learners enter imaginatively into the world of the play by taking on the roles of various characters in two dramatised courtroom hearings.
Readers from across southern Africa recognise Robin Malan’s name as an anthologist and a publisher; through Junkets he publishes a wide range of fiction and non-fiction, and an award-winning series of original playscripts. Robin knows his Shakespeare inside-out (that’s why he compiled the Sillie Shakspur Quizze). But he is also an accomplished actor! In this photo from the Maynardville archives, he is playing Edmund in a 1966 production of King Lear.
A note to sceptical teachers
I have devised two dramatised courtroom hearings, to be used as Othello teaching aids (along with two schematic summaries of characters, settings and other details). I know some teachers swear at the very thought of drama in their classroom, while others swear by it. I certainly advocate the use of role-play and playing out a scene, even – if need be – with students seated at their desks in the conventional arrangement.
These two hearings are better served by a ‘courtroom’ arrangement of desks, either in the ‘British’ or ‘American’ style, simulating a judge, legal representatives, the accused, and a witness-stand. The non-participants make up the public gallery at the back of the classroom. It should be easy enough to arrange this set-up with a very brief disruption spilling over to adjacent classrooms.
Of course there are teachers who persist in claiming that any use of drama is simply a waste of teaching time. Wrong. I offer one instance: a Form 4 (Grade 11) History class in an international school in then-Swaziland (eSwatini) enacted the workings of UNSCOPI = the United Nations Special Commission on Palestine and Israel. The students decided their affiliation: the UN officials, the Palestinian delegation, the Israeli delegation, reporters on a daily newspaper. We took over the Senior Common Room for two double-periods for three weeks. The students had access to all the maps of the area from 1948 to the present. It was their job to find a solution (geographical and political) to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The students entered into the drama with gusto and great earnestness. At one point, to everyone’s surprise, the Palestinians staged a walk-out. The UN officials did not know what to do. They came and asked me; I said I couldn’t tell them, but I could inform them of the practice of lobbying or corridor politics. The next day’s newspaper carried breaking news of urgent lobbying that went on in the boys’ hostel even after Lights-Out! The Palestinians were persuaded to return. Students from other forms popped in to listen during their free periods. It even seeped into the Staffroom, with some heated side-taking. A promising single-state solution was decided on. Hard on the heels of UNSCOPI came the mid-year exams. All the History students chose the Arab-Israeli conflict, and produced pretty good essays. It was clear that they had listened to one another and so had become informed on areas they weren’t directly involved in. I have no doubt that students learned more than they would have if the topic had been handled in a conventional situation of textbook/notes/dictation. Boring.
What I offer here is at least worth a try. If you as the teacher get excited about it, the students will, too.
Robin Malan
Pinelands, January 2024