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Vol. 38, No. 18 |
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11-19-2008 Bringing the Bard to the Buckeye stateThe Royal Shakespeare Company teams with Ohio State to help Ohio students fall in love (again) with ShakespeareIt’s probably safe to say Shakespeare is more accessible via live performance than through a classroom recitation. The words, paired with action and inflection, become more than just ink on a page.
Given the RSC’s long history — the company’s roots trace back to 1879 and the building of the first permanent theater in Stratford-upon-Avon, the town of Shakespeare’s birth and death — the task of giving expression to the Bard for today’s audiences should come easily. The company launched a program in Britain in March 2007 called “Stand Up for Shakespeare” to bring Shakespeare alive in the classroom. Thousands of students and their teachers have participated in the program, which is based on three main principles: Explore plays actively and practically, see live performances and introduce the works of Shakespeare to younger students. “Stand Up for Shakespeare” is a teacher-education program that will figure prominently in the partnership between Ohio State and the RSC. The program will be a three-year, graduate-level venture designed to equip Ohio’s public school teachers to better teach Shakespeare across all grade levels. The Royal Shakespeare Company-Ohio State partnership also will establish a Young People’s Shakespeare Festival, tentatively planned for 2012, for central Ohio educators, students and the community. RSC Artistic Director Michael Boyd said the partnership will be mutually beneficial for Ohio State and the theater company. “For a long time we’ve been on the lookout and interested in relationships with academic institutions,” he said. “We are an arts organization that has the ambition to learn and make art at the same time, and where better to look for the spirit of inquiry than at a major American institution? “This partnership deepens our inquiry into the educational benefits of working with kids in this way. Ohio State is a major research university and we can get hard evidence out of this program that we can use to improve the ‘Stand Up for Shakespeare’ program and persuade other people to pick up on it both in the UK and elsewhere.” In Ohio, the “Stand Up for Shakespeare” approach will focus on developing leadership in arts-based education. OSU will support week-long summer workshops in Stratford-upon-Avon and week-long summer workshops in central Ohio for teacher leaders from 2009-12. Led by teaching faculty from Ohio State and education staff and actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company, these workshops will focus on engaging students in grades 3-12 with the canon of Shakespeare. This trans-institutional partnership is being spearheaded by the Ohio State Arts Initiative and includes the College of Education and Human Ecology, several departments in the Colleges of the Arts and Humanities and the Wexner Center. President Gordon Gee said the partnership is what the university is all about. “This collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company builds on the university’s tremendous strengths in the arts, brings a new cultural dimension to our community and extends Ohio State’s creative work around the world,” Gee said. “Sustaining the fine and performing arts and bringing human expression to the fore are among our great callings as a public university.”
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