"my shakespeare" presentations available online!

August 13, 2019 Chris T

For those of you who are experiencing serious FOMO and wish you had attended the “my shakespeare” workshop at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town, May 2019, for teachers grappling with what it means to teach and study Shakespeare in South Africa today, FEAR NOT! There is access to a few videos from the workshop. Take a look below!

Also, if you would like to read through the workshop programme to understand where these presentations fit in, click here.

Orienting towards our learners: Shakespeare in the multilingual classroom, by Dr Robyn Tyler, a specialist in language and literacy across the curriculum.

Readings and reflections on Shakespeare in translation by Buhle Ngaba, a South African actress, theatre activist and writer.

Integrating Shakespeare across the curriculum, by Lauren Bates, a South African English and Drama teacher, Shakespeare Scholar and Theatre in Education practitioner.

Improvisation in teaching and performing Shakespeare, by Bronwen Rees, a teacher and researcher focusing on Shakespeare in Performance. She s currently HOD of Dramatic Arts at Jeppe High School for Boys.

FOR ONCE: UMSEBENZI KA BRA SHAKES

August 4, 2019 Chris T

ONE NIGHT ONLY PERFORMANCE: FRIDAY, 9 AUGUST, 7PM

Umsebenzi Ka Bra Shakes interrogates the use and relevance of Shakespeare for South African performers, storytellers, makers, learners and audiences. It explores Shakespeare within culture and language contexts, raising questions around violence, masculinity and representation.

This process-driven exploration brings together a creative team from various backgrounds, embracing the principle of “the less good idea”: creating from words and stories borrowed from Shakespearean texts and hopefully allowing something that is neither a South Africanised adaptation nor a translation to emerge.

Umsebenzi Ka Bra Shakes is presented by POPArt Productions in collaboration with The Centre for the Less Good Idea, The Shakespeare Society of South Africa, Johannesburg Awakening Minds, Market Theatre Lab & Kwasha Drama Company.

Performed by Sibahle Mangena, Molatelo Maffa, Thulisile Nduvane, Aalliyah Matintela, Rachael Neary, Sinenhlanhla Mgeyi, Vusi Nkwenkwezi, Michael Mazibuko, Lwazi Mayeki and Bongani Dlamini.

Facilitated by Hayleigh Evans and Phala O. Phala. Created in collaboration with the cast.

TICKETS: https://lessgoodidea.com/tickets

Video: SSOSA congress events

July 30, 2019 Chris T

Have you been experiencing severe FOMO since hearing about “Making Shakespeare” and the “Shakespeare and Social Justice” conference at the Fugard Theatre in Cape Town this past May?

Fear no more. The Shakespeare ZA team is pleased to share with you these fantastic videos!

***

First up: an overview of the “Making Shakespeare” workshop for theatre-makers.

Next: a rich conversation between John Kani and Buhle Ngaba.

And, finally, the inimitable Ayanna Thompson’s keynote lecture on “Shakespeare and Blackface” / “Shakespeare and Unfreedom”. WOW!

Making Shakespeare

June 22, 2019 Chris T

by Marguerite de Waal

One month ago, following the “my shakespeare” teacher’s workshop at the Baxter theatre, a diverse group of theatre-makers and actors gathered at the Fugard Theatre for “Making Shakespeare”, exploring how – and why – artists might make, unmake, and remake Shakespeare in South Africa. This was a landmark gathering in many ways, and resulted in invigorating discussions and performances which will doubtless prove fertile ground for future artistic practice.

About 30 participants, ranging in age and experience and representing many different backgrounds (and approaches to Shakespeare) gathered on the morning of Wednesday, the 15th of May, in the Fugard foyer for a cup of coffee and a snack before starting a full day of workshopping. The hospitality of the Fugard staff was a constant during the two-day event, and especially felt during the tea and lunch breaks in this same foyer. Similarly, participants became well acquainted with the three main meeting spaces at the theatre, each with its own character and spatial dynamic: the Sigrid Rausing studio, the Homecoming Centre workshop room, and the Fugard meeting room. Starting at 09:00, the whole group met in the Sigrid Rausing studio, where they were formally welcomed by Chris Thurman, the president of SSoSA (the Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa).

The introduction outlined the motivations for convening the workshop, placing it in context as the second of three events forming part of SSoSA’s triennial congress: “my shakespeare”, “Making Shakespeare”, and the “Shakespeare and Social Justice” academic conference, which was set to start at the tail-end of the theatre workshops on Thursday afternoon. All three events wanted to acknowledge the challenges and complicated history behind Shakespeare, and Shakespeare in South Africa. This included the question of whether Shakespeare should still be staged or taught at all, and if so, how? For “Making Shakespeare”, the focus was therefore placed squarely on the theatre makers and actors as creative agents.

Participants were then divided into three groups of between six and eight performers; each group would remain together while rotating through three workshop sessions by different facilitators in different venues throughout the day. In a last, fourth session, each of the three groups convened to put together a short performance of sorts built on dynamics and ideas developed throughout the day.

… the focus was placed squarely on the theatre makers and actors as creative agents.

The sessions provided rich opportunities for working towards the performance end-goal. One session looked at voice work and a practical application of a range of vocal expression to some of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Another asked performers to respond in an improvisational mode to a physical copy of a Shakespeare text placed in the centre of the stage. This exercise became even more dense and interesting when, once a pattern of response had been established, the text was removed. Most sessions, like these, were very practical, and acted very much like specifically framed rehearsals. For example, one of the first sessions, held in the workshop room of the Homecoming Centre, prompted actors to learn a speech from one of the plays without any script. Instead of learning the words from a piece of paper, the director/facilitator read out lines in short sections to groups of two to three actors, who rehearsed them in iterations that built up (as more fragments of the speech were provided) into the full speech, memorised and interpreted through intense collaboration. At least one session did break from this pattern to provide a more reflective, discussion-based interaction.

In the practical sessions, a recurrent theme was the free translation of the Shakespeare text into the home languages of the performers, including Setswana, isiZulu, and Afrikaans. The importance and potential of such translations became a central point of discussion after the performances on the second day of the workshops. Another frequent reference point was Hamlet – whether looking back at past performances, working with the text itself, or simply considering the text-as-object. This was deliberate, as one of the closing sessions of the last day would be a round-table discussion aimed at the planned production of Hamlet to be directed by Neil Coppen at the Fugard in 2020.

Thursday the 16th of May started off with the three groups each presenting the performance they had put together in the final session of the previous day. Each performance reflected aspects of the previous days’ workshopping in different combinations and to very different effects, all three equally entertaining and intriguing. The discussion following each was animated, covering a range of pressure-points for making Shakespeare in South Africa, including translation, school curricula, decolonisation, and uneven (and unequal) race representation in productions. There was a clear sense both of the energy and enjoyment behind the playfully subversive performances of the actors, as well as of the importance of having the debates and discussions which ensued. Many of these talking points continued into and formed the basis of the discussion on Hamlet 2020.

… a recurrent theme was the free translation of the Shakespeare text into the home languages of the performers.

The rest of Thursday afternoon and evening was spent on three events which marked the transition of the “Making Shakespeare” workshop to the Shakespeare and Social Justice conference: a conversation between Buhle Ngaba and John Kani, Professor Ayanna Thompson’s presentation on “Shakespeare and Blackface, or, Shakespeare and Unfreedom”, and a performance of Kunene and the King, starring John Kani and Anthony Sher.

These three events added more layers of complexity to the discussions that had been initiated over two intensely engaging days. None of the questions raised during “Making Shakespeare” were paired with definitive answers by the end of those two days. This is as it should be, I think: any cure-all “solutions” put together over such a short period of time would have to be treated with suspicion. Moreover, the workshop seemed to demonstrate that growth, change, and creativity are the results of the sometimes painful, often liberating act of questioning. In such a context, insisting on a single resolution in any one direction runs the risk of being reductive. To counter that which is restrictive and static (and colonial?), we need to keep questioning, playing, making, and re-making.

The Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa and all the “Making Shakespeare” participants thank The Fugard Theatre, CN&CO, and BASA for their wonderful support in making this event possible.

"my shakespeare" revisited

June 7, 2019 Chris T

It’s hard to believe that almost a month has passed since the “my shakespeare” teachers’ workshop at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town! For those who were fortunate enough to participate in this event, the energy and ideas and passion that it generated feel very fresh. We thought it would be a good idea to post a little reminder . . .

Firstly, a big THANK YOU to our wonderful hosts at the Baxter Theatre, and to our generous sponsors: the always-awesome folk at CN&CO and the amazingly-arts-affirming BASA!

These posters are a record of the “silent conversation” that took place alongside the presentations and workshop sessions … and of course all the LOUD conversations in between!

Our presenters, Robyn Tyler, Buhle Ngaba, Bronwen Rees, Amanda Mkehle and Lauren Bates, gave fascinating plenary talks on:

Orienting towards our learners: Shakespeare in the multilingual classroom
Readings and reflections on Shakespeare in translation
Integrating Shakespeare across the curriculum
and
Improvisation in teaching and performing Shakespeare

Then it was time for breakaway sessions on:

Lifting the text off the page
Multilingual Essay Writing
and
Creative Writing with Shakespeare’s Fools

Day one ended with a performance, by alumni of Vista Nova School, of The Robben Island Shakespeare (written by Matthew Hahn and directed by Lauren Bates).

Day two concluded with a panel discussion, including Fazeelah Haffejee of the Western Cape Education Department and Peter Ruddock of the Independent Examinations Board, on the challenges of transforming curriculum and assessment practices.

So, where to from here?

Well, we have to tackle those curriculum and assessment issues!

And how about using Shakespeare to support the language and literacy advocacy work of the bua-lit collective? You can read Robyn Tyler’s blog post about “my shakespeare” on the bua-lit website here.

Or maybe you and your learners could sign up for the Shakespeare Schools Festival?

We are currently revising the Resources section of Shakespeare ZA to accommodate the teaching and learning materials that some of the “my shakespeare” participants have generously shared (different plays will have dedicated pages, the Translation section will be expanding, etc). Please keep these contributions coming …

Make sure you follow Shakespeare ZA on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram to receive updates in the coming months, and spread the word among your learners and fellow teachers!

Finally, a few thoughts from workshop participants:

“It was great that all of the sessions were so interactive! We got to do things that made us vulnerable, but also affirmed us as experienced teachers and helped us realise that we know more than we thought. Sometimes you know it ‘at the back of your brain’, but you are so focused on the curriculum and exams that you don’t have time or energy to think beyond that. The atmosphere was so productive and everyone was really concentrating, expanding our ideas as well as having the reassurance of what we are already getting right. And thinking about our learners’ needs – for example, encouraging movement in the classroom, allowing the children to learn and explore through performance.”

“I realised that I need to be more aware of the multilingualism my learners bring into the class. Even English, I have learned, is not a ‘monolingual language’, it is translingual, influenced by the different language environments and language backgrounds of the speaker. And so there are many different ‘versions’ of English! I am going to take back to my school what I learned about multilingualism and explore how translation plays a role in understanding, not just Shakespeare, not just English, but other subjects too.”

“Teachers need to network more. So often the teachers I work with are conservative in their approach, but the colleagues I met attending this workshop are really forward-thinking! The speakers were fantastic, their talks were well-structured and very informative. It would have been nice to have more question time, and more time for discussion between teachers. Please make the workshop materials available online! ***”