And, a comment about all of our presentations...Although Dr. Sexson offered that we might not have acting scouts banging down our doors, I am pretty impressed with everyone. Morgan's lit classes might present a play every semester, but can they quickly break into groups and present an understandable version of Shakespeare? (No offense to my peers who have performed in one of Morgan's lit class plays of course)
As I have mentioned multiple times, I believe that performance is a an awesome way to interpret texts. In my future classroom I hope to use this medium as much as possible. While there are many reasons to use performance in the non-drama classroom, here are just a few:
- Teachers are essentially performers and the classroom is their stage. Like an actor to it's audience the teacher transforms herself to portray the character that is most appropriate for the audience to understand the details of the play. (or the lesson)
- In order to perform one must understand what it is they are to perform.
- Likewise, performing what is known or understood can help perpetuate learning towards mastery or comprehension.
- My favorite reason in support of performance is that Shakespeare used it, so why should we? Our friend, Bill used performance as a way to communicate not only his eloquent language, but current events, and as a way to tell a story.
Each groups' project exemplified what they had learned about their given play because they were able to perform the piece to an audience. In my opinion there is a huge difference between writing a paper and reciting the words and diving into a piece of literature and being able to perform the most important themes by using the smallest details.
Bravo class!
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