A response to George Belliveau’s article: “How can drama and theatre techniques be used to provide an entry point into literary study?”

Belliveau’s article is such a useful teaching tool because it breaks down some steps that teachers can use to create a whole lesson plan. He uses A Midsummer Night’s Dream as an example of a dramatic text that can be taught through drama. I have never studied this particular Shakespearean play, so I am going to use Romeo and Juliet as an example for some of my own ideas, and potentially as a future lesson plan.

I found this website to be particularly useful: http://theshakespearefactory.com/educators/teacher-resources/romeo-and-juliet/

Some of my own ideas on how to get students into Shakespeare:

1. Create profile posters (or Facebook pages) for the main characters. (Romeo, Juliet, Tybalt, Mercutio, Nurse, Prince, etc). Get students to act out a modern-day flirtation scene, for example, or have them simulate a texting sequence between Romeo and Juliet, or hate messages (cyberbullying) between a Montague and a Capulet.

2. Get students to create a screenplay out a pivotal scene, and then performing for the class.

3. Tableaux of pivotal scenes (as Belliveau suggested), but perhaps with an included element of charades: can the other students guess what scene the group is enacting?

4. Alternative endings. Get students to think about where in the tragedy disaster could have been avoided (or exacerbated), asking students to choose a scene that they want to modify in order to give the story a different ending. This will help them identify turning points in the plot.

The list could go on…and more power to drama in classrooms!