When Jesus Montaño stood before us and asked "What if Hamlet’s father was a cholo?" it shifted the class of educators from the early morning trying-to-show-energy-through-the-Mondays coffee chat to very-grad-student-brain serious faces and "Hmmms..." covering for the internal "What's a cholo? I hope he doesn't ask me" worries surely sprinkled throughout the room. Luckily for the afeared, there was no pop quiz, but there was an important base laid for this day's class.
Before then moving into approaches to examining masculinity in Bloodline by Joe Jiménez, Dr. Montaño gave us one of those "I've never thought of that" lit bits: the only audience not comprised of academics that reads Shakespeare is young adults; thus, Shakespeare is very much YA literature. So, when pairing a Shakespeare play with a modern YA text, that's pairing two YA pieces. So, yeah, Hamlet certainly has a certain set of masculinity issues, but if he was a Latino teen such as Jiménez's Abram, examining those issues would require an understanding and framing of machismos and a working toward healthier masculinities, and Dr. Montaño provided us with very helpful resources on those approaches and constructions, including a discussion of rasquache/rasquachismo when using a text like Bloodline. In small groups we engaged in a very interesting activity of examining how four female characters from that novel are doing something to help Abram be a better man or to understand being a better man (or not)? My group discussed the letter Ophelia's mom writes to her that Ophelia reads aloud to Abram--how the act of writing a letter is specifically more meaningful and purposeful than, say, composing a text message; how the intimacy of letter-writing is one that Abram has never known and one that makes him very uncomfortable in Ophelia's lack of discomfort in sharing it (yet something that needs to be protected as he opens an umbrella to protect her reading of the letter from the rain). Dr. Montaño even noted how sometimes writing a letter to someone is really writing a letter to oneself. In the afternoon, the class had its first group teaching demo from Julia, Jahna, and Jordan (alliteration surely coincidental). The bar was set high (though my group vowed to crush their memory into a fine powder to be scattered by the winds of amnesia with our upcoming demo), and as "students" we picked up some really cool approaches to teaching a text like The Steep & Thorny Way either before or after an accompanying Shakespeare play. I appreciated the activity involving asking questions of an image we had not seen before and without context, questioning our own questions and how we might then apply them to Hamlet and how we could then make our own adaption of the play based on the "movie" from which our assigned image was a still frame--definitely something I plan to apply to my classes back home. Dr. Montaño then took us through a helpful exercise in deciding how to pair a modern YA text with a Shakespeare play (and how we shouldn't default to deciding what modern text choice should come from a chosen play--why not vice versa?). There are justifications for multiple Shakespeare plays being related to a given YA novel, and I was glad he brought up I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by Erika L. Sánchez, which I've taught for three years prior and had success with but had never considered in conjunction with a Shakespeare play. "The tragedy is not Othello's," Dr. Montaño noted as we shifted to that play and its "Potential and Promise," as his presentation slide read. "It is ours." Today's class ended with not shying away from an inevitable elephant that will appear in our classrooms and how to teach issues of race. Pairing that play with readings and resources that show race through an honest lens and framing the experiences of Americans of color (often involving the violence of the state) not as "spectacle," as our classmate Rachel put it, but as ongoing patterns and realities, put a poignant cap on a very full day of learning how to better adapt Shakespeare in our classrooms.
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Conventions of Beginnings & Endings How many times have I told my student writers, “Don’t break the conventions of Standard Written English unless you have a compelling rhetorical reason”? Lots. Lots and lots and LOTS of times. Conventions give us clarity and understanding. They are important agreements between writers and readers. They allow written communication to be interpreted by both parties. Conventions are familiar. They make us feel safe and supported. That’s why it was initially so difficult for me to get into the YA novel Bloodline by Joe Jimenez. My reading didn’t feel safe or supported because the story is told through the unconventional second person narration. The second person! Not first. Not third, but the SECOND person. Why the second person? Why would you do that to me? Who are YOU
I haven’t finished reading If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler yet. I think that’s fitting. It’s a book that’s all about the beginnings and my weary, teacher brain didn’t want to begin summer break with a challenging, experimental, non-linear, second person narrative about lots of beginnings.
I finished Bloodline though. Partly because it was an assignment, partly because I got swept up in the story, and partly because of the lyrical descriptions by Abram, the main character. “As they course by, the cheerleaders pause, their pompoms hissing. A trickle of students trudge through the halls, around you, like slow, tall birds, and some like star-ships zooming into other dimensions—everything spins, especially your heart.” (Chapter 2, Kindle location 244 of 1508) The words felt like my descriptions. Sure, they were Joe Jimenez’s descriptions because he wrote them. Buy maybe they were my descriptions because I was Abram. Or maybe they’re your descriptions because you’re the reader. Jesus Montaño, our guest lecturer for the day, related that reading in the second person is hard. It’s intimate and immediate. It removes the distance between “you the reader” and “you the character” in disconcerting ways so that each must fight to create space for one another. Fighting becomes a motif in the novel. Novels in second person like Bloodline problematize the construction of storytelling and the purpose of literature. When the author, character and reader intertwine, questions emerge: Why do we read? What do we want from the experience? Why does a story end? What forces the ending? It’s the forceful ending the makes Bloodline unforgettable. It’s where that compelling rhetorical reason for the second person is finally revealed. Then the narration style is forced to change. The story ends but the question remains. Could YOU experience a different ending? “Slanders, sir; for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards” There are two significant moments in the final scenes of King Lear. The first is when Edgar, who’s been duped by his brother and chased like a criminal by his father’s men, is lamenting about his situation, encounters his blinded father out on the heath and realizes, “Worse I may be yet, the worst is not so long as we can say this is the worst.” He understands at that moment, that no matter one’s own circumstances, there is always someone worse off. Later near the end of the play, Edmund, who previously had signed the death warrant for King Lear and Cordelia, has had a change of heart as he lies dying, “Some good I mean to do…” and sends a messenger to the free the imprisoned king and his daughter, but alas, it is too late. Edmund dies off stage perhaps thinking he’s saved their lives. These are poignant moments in what is perhaps the most tragic of the tragedies. The final scene delivers the gut punch that firmly says, despite a change of heart or even an epiphany, tragedy is still a good probability. Although the Utah Shakespeare Festival delivered this message in their production, for this Shakespeare snob, it fell a bit flat. The play is a tale that explores emotional extremes and the effects of those emotional extremes. At the start of the play, Kent and Gloucester discuss the king’s sudden plan of dividing the kingdom, not particularly by which daughter Lear favors, but which duke Lear “values” most, Cornwall or Albany. The tone is set here in these opening lines; Lear’s “retirement” comes as a surprise, which sets the stage for upheaval in what seems to have been a peaceful reign. How goes the king, so goes the realm is a mantra I learned back in my undergrad as a barometer of tragedy. If we begin in peace, which we can assume we do by the suddenness of Lear’s move, then this shakes up that serenity. The play should begin with concern and anxiety. The production in Cedar City began with laughter, a jovial king joking and all attendees seemingly in on the joke. The light tone allows the audience too to be in on the joke. The resulting emotional switch simply becomes happy to angry, but the text suggests the switch should be somewhat rational to completely irrational. The resulting irrational behavior then leaves the audience off-balance, unsure of what will come next. Angry is predictable, tolerable. Instability leads to madness which is far more terrifying than simple anger. Today’s more psychologically aware audiences do not have a firm grip on what madness had been; a few modern movies toy with the idea with modest success, but at the time of Lear madness was feared by kings on down to the stable boy, “O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! Keep me in temper, I would not be mad!” (1.5. 46-47). This production fails to land that fear partially because some of the characters do not revel in the chaos. The Gloucester plot line should mirror the Lear story emotionally. Gloucester is lied to by his bastard son Edmund, that the innocent, legitimate son, Edgar, has planned to assassinate him and divide the revenue, “If our father sleep till I waked him, you should enjoy half his revenue” reads the letter Edmund wrote, but alleges Edgar penned himself. “O, villain, villain! His very opinion in the letter!” responds Gloucester in the same level of irrationality that Lear reached in just the scene prior with Cordelia. The audience should be pushed further off-balance emotionally, but here on the Cedar City stage we are giggling along with a malicious sprite of an Edmund, rather than being awed by a diabolical master villain. Again, we get the idea of what’s supposed to happen, but it all lacks a sense of fear or a sense of chaos. We the audience should behold these actions of Lear, Gloucester, and Edmund with terror, instead it seems we are simply waiting for a joke to break the tension.
The Fool played by Aidan O’Reilly was not only a strong performance, but he also played it with an understanding of the Fool’s role not just in the play, but for Lear as his king. Strangely, the Fool appeared in the opening scene of this production. The text does not have him there and later Lear is looking for him, “Where’s my knave? My Fool? Go you and call my Fool hither.” (1.4.43). The Fool’s role in the play and in the real world was discussed by Scott in his lecture on the 14th of July. That the Fool was present adds to the confusion of tone in scene one. The Fool is responsible in the play for a lightness of tone, jokes as well as speaking truth to power, his primary role on stage. O’Reilly seems to have understood the gravity of his role. In the text, the Fool inexplicably disappears in Act Three and there have been many trees that have fallen as scholars have tried to explain the “why.” My own studies have led me to believe the Fool disappears because he can no longer speak truth to power, as the king is now powerless. Lear is mad and has, for all intents and purposes, disappeared. In this production, the Fool is simply abandoned and exits upstage center. It’s a moment that allows for creativity, but here it was a missed opportunity. The play is about enduring the worst and knowing for certain that the “worst is not so long as we can say this is the worst.” The late scenes draw focus to a world that may not pay off as we hope. This production cut Edgar’s line, but he speaks the last lines of the play: “Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most; we that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long.” These are deeply tragic words, but in this production, they fall flat because the lead up to this final moment was overlooked. We are denied the emotional heartache that is intended.
The emotional misstep early on prepares the audience for what a friend of mine would call a “Workman-like Production,” a term we use to describe a performance that tells the story, but lacks insight or creativity. If this is the only Lear you’ll ever see, you enjoyed a lovely night and good production. For a snob like me, I’m hoping to perhaps learn something new about a familiar play, or have a character portrait illuminated I hadn’t noticed before, or perhaps a theme singled out that made the play seem new and appropriate for our modern time. This play fell a little short in that aspect, but it did tell the story and perhaps someone will see another version of Lear and see something new for them and that person will then have a barometer of their own.
The black box venue suited the show in more ways than one. There were no weak points in this scaled down cast, though the bravura performance was delivered by Jasmine Bracey as Prospero. She brought such power to the role while never losing her warmth as a parent figure to both Ariel and Miranda. She was quite literally one of the best Prosperos I have ever seen, and I said as much in a social media post after the show (a post that was then liked by the actors playing Gonoril, Kent, and the Fool from King Lear—that’s my kind of multiverse, haha). The smaller venue gave Bracey the opportunity to explore all of the quieter aspects of a role that has traditionally been played for spectacle and bombast.
Even the one “problem” with the show—a blackout that caused a short five-minute delay—ultimately demonstrated the quality of this cast. The actors on stage had just lost technology—a necessary element for this show—in a scene that particularly needed it (Ariel’s appearance as a harpy). Rather than retreat backstage or break character, all of the performers remained in place, with Steven Jensen (Gonzalo) continuing his “lost in despair” movements and Sophia K. Metcalf (a delightful Ariel) maintaining a crouched pose that had my own back aching in solidarity. When it was clear that the delay would be a matter of minutes rather than seconds, the actors did re-set, but that kind of dedication in the face of technical trouble was impressive. While attending the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, we were provided an opportunity to meet with Southern Utah University’s Theatre Education expert Michael Bahr. This workshop was SO enjoyable and many of my colleagues commented on how these strategies will be used in our classes. Michael encouraged us to engage students with Shakespeare through theatre. We began by singing…yes, a group sing-along, which sold me. Paul presented us with poster boards of Mya Lixian Gosling’s lyrics for King Lear, sung to the tune of “Santa Claus is coming to town.” I appreciated this introduction to Gosling’s work, as they transform well-known song tunes to address Shakesperean themes found at Good Tickle Brain, I can see this being a big hit with my students!
One of our teaching groups adapted this activity as their lesson by having us mirror movement with a partner while saying phrases related to Desdemona and girlhood. It was a great connection to movement and themes with acting and reacting to set the tone. I really enjoyed the opportunity to see the strategies we learned with Michael in action.
He really provided many Shakespeare and general theatre resources such as improv games for educators to use in their classrooms. I know these will be a big hit with my students! |
Author25 teachers gathered in Ogden, Utah to work together and learn about Shakespeare and Adaptation from three regular and several visiting faculty. These are their stories. ArchivesCategories |