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Shakespeare High is an uplifting documentary that follows a diverse group of Californian high school students as they prepare for and compete in the 90th Drama Teachers Association of Southern California Shakespeare Festival. Through their passion and working together toward a common goal that reflects and transcends their ethnic and socioeconomic divides, the dedicated teens manage to overcome their own personal hurdles and history.
The film focuses primarily on under-privileged teens and highlights the life-changing effects drama programs such this can have on young people. The film follows a compelling group of teens with moving and dramatic personal stories, including: Tosh, African-American, a sophomore; Luis, Latino, a sophomore; and Chris, Latino, a senior - all three former gang members from East LA's Pacoima Valley. Nicole comes from a struggling family living in Hesperia, an isolated, low-income desert community. Tommy was raised by his single mother in Hesperia after his parents - former skin-heads - separated. Galvin and Melvin are African-American twin brothers who witnessed a violent family act.
The teen's stories are interspersed with commentary from alumni of the DTASC program including Kevin Spacey, Val Kilmer, and Richard Dreyfus discussing and teaching students hands-on the magic of drama and Shakespeare. Shakespeare High is a riveting celebration of performance education, creativity and youth.
Reviews
"Inspiring. Performing Shakespeare can save children's lives. That is the persuasive argument of Shakespeare High." - Stephen Holden, The New York Times
"Engaging... enormously inspiring." - LA Times
"This film is a must-see for all English teachers as it shows how students can transform their lives when they become involved in programs like the one featured in Shakespeare High ". - National Council of Teachers of English
Award
Top 5 Audience Award, Palm Spring Film Festival, 2011
Specifically designed to raise grades and performance, this Teaching System module correlates directly to state standards and was designed by teaching professionals recognized for their expertise and mastery of the subject material.
Topics Covered
The life and times of Shakespeare
Shakespeare's use of language
Elizabethan drama
The importance of words
Real life vs. stage life
DVD (With CD-ROM) / 2008 / (Grade 7 or above) / 26 minutes
Specifically designed to raise grades and performance, this Teaching System module correlates directly to state standards and was designed by teaching professionals recognized for their expertise and mastery of the subject material.
Topics Covered
The plot of King Lear
King Lear as a tragedy
King Lear
Cordelia
Gloucester
Edmund
Edgar
Goneril and Regan
DVD (With CD-ROM) / 2008 / (Grade 7 or above) / 26 minutes
Specifically designed to raise grades and performance, this Teaching System module correlates directly to state standards and was designed by teaching professionals recognized for their expertise and mastery of the subject material.
Topics Covered
Dual plots approach
The Lear plot
The Gloucester plot
Figurative art approach
Use of metaphor and images
DVD (With CD-ROM) / 2008 / (Grade 7 or above) / 26 minutes
Specifically designed to raise grades and performance, this Teaching System module correlates directly to state standards and was designed by teaching professionals recognized for their expertise and mastery of the subject material.
Topics Covered
Defining tragedy
Oedipus Rex
Medieval tragedy
Shakespeare and tragedy
DVD (With CD-ROM) / 2008 / (Grade 7 or above) / 26 minutes
Specifically designed to raise grades and performance, this Teaching System module correlates directly to state standards and was designed by teaching professionals recognized for their expertise and mastery of the subject material.
Topics Covered
The element of mystery
The philosophy of Hamlet
The element of revenge
DVD (With CD-ROM) / 2008 / (Grade 7 or above) / 26 minutes
Specifically designed to raise grades and performance, this Teaching System module correlates directly to state standards and was designed by teaching professionals recognized for their expertise and mastery of the subject material.
Topics Covered
The tragic fall of Othello
Othello as a tragedy
Jealousy
The handkerchief
Othello as a tragic figure
DVD (With CD-ROM) / 2008 / (Grade 7 or above) / 26 minutes
Young Monash University academics Kim Edwards and Erica Hateley, provide a detailed analysis of this text. The video includes: discussion about the main characters, setting, themes and plot, the structure of the play, how language and imagery is used, different kinds of language and its purpose, the nature of a tragedy and a tragic hero, as well as the supernatural elements of the play. Key scenes are acted out, and will assist students to understand and appreciate this popular play.
Please contact us for primary and secondary schools pricing.
Note : The above titles may have some territorial restrictions. Please feel free to send us an enquiry.
Young Monash University academics Kim Edwards and Erica Hateley provide a detailed analysis of this text. The program includes: discussion about the main characters, themes and plot, the structure of the play, how language and imagery is used, different kinds of language and its purpose, the nature of a tragedy, as well as the purpose of the prologue. Key scenes from the play are acted out, and will assist students to understand and appreciate this timeless text.
Please contact us for primary and secondary schools pricing.
Note : The above titles may have some territorial restrictions. Please feel free to send us an enquiry.
Kathleen Conlin, Director of the Ohio University school of theater, presents a unique and highly physical series of exercises that move from exploration of specific words and phrases through the development of complete Shakespearean scenes. This detailed process enables actors to merge visceral, physical, vocal and imaginative work with the demands of complex text.
Review
"Five Stars! This video is a nuts and bolts building block to support the acting curriculum. It is highly recommended for theatrical arts curriculum at the high school level or above." - Video Rating Guide For Libraries
Who was the man who wrote these plays and poems? Was the author a grain-dealer named William Shakespeare born in Stratford-upon-Avon or Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford? Why was there a 400 year-old conspiracy to hide the true author? This video provides a stimulating and controversial point of view that is bound to provoke classroom discussion and independent study of the Authorship issue. Drawing on original 16th century documents and the Oxford Bible, this film makes a full investigation into the lives of both men.
Almost four centuries after Shakespeare's original Globe Theatre commenced performances in 1599, Queen Elizabeth II officially opened the reconstructed Elizabethan Theatre in June 1997. To celebrate Shakespeare's work and to recreate performances with the original setting and effects for which Shakespeare wrote his greatest plays, the rebuilt and fully operational Globe provides a venue for teaching and studying. This video documents eighteen months of planning, rehearsal, location work and post-production by the Shakespeare Program of the University of California at Berkeley, culminating in this historically significant production of "Much Ado About Nothing." According to Hugh Richmond, Educational Director of the Shakespeare Globe Center, USA and Professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley, "This video showcases some of the ways in which performance on the original Shakespearean stage diverges from modern practice. The broad stage, pillars and accessibility of the audience require a dynamic choreography and outgoing style providing a fresh model for modern theater."
The Greek play was an essential element of the ancient Mediterranean culture, and it eventually evolved into modern theatre. Explore the origins of Greek theatre and learn how the staging of a play changed over the course of time.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
1) Students will learn that ancient Greek plays were designed to provide a religious experience to the masses.
2) Students will learn how ancient Greek playwrights competed against one another for awards.
3) Students will learn about the purpose of the 'Greek chorus.'
4) Students will learn about the physical structure of the Greek theatre.
'Othello' is not only one of Shakespeare's greatest works it is also a text laden with meaning and themes. This DVD looks at the various themes of love and jealousy, proof and judgement, as well as the symbolism in the handkerchief. By playing through 4 key sections of the play, the DVD shows how the themes work.
Please contact us for primary and secondary schools pricing.
Note : The above titles may have some territorial restrictions. Please feel free to send us an enquiry.
This program compares Shakespearean themes with similar themes from modern works, enabling students to penetrate complex Elizabethan vocabulary and experience insight into character's feelings, motives and actions. Film clips from screen adaptations of 'Wuthering Heights', 'Lord of the Flies', 'Mutiny on the Bounty', 'Animal Farm', 'The Lives of Dorian Gray' and others help illustrate themes like alienations, evil and ambition.
Explore the characters, stories and central themes of Shakespearean tragedy. The program is based on an interview with Suzanne L. Wofford, Assistant Professor of English, Yale University, who describes the theater of Shakespeare's day and the nature of Shakespearean tragedy.
Students trace the development of England's commercial and military power, and social and cultural life. This leads to a discussion of early theaters and the operations of the Globe-its architecture, stage design and galleries. Dramatic readings, authentic costumes and sound effects present Shakespearean drama as it may have looked to its original audiences.
Interpretations by Anthony Tudor, Berlioz, Shakespeare
Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet." In drama with Bryarl Lee (Juliet) and Stephen Joyce (Romeo); as music with Alice Howland and John McCollum singing Berlioz' setting of key scenes; and as ballet with Nora Kaye and Hugh Laing dancing Anthony Tudor's choreography. Emanuel Vardi conducts an off-stage orchestra.
Shakespeare enjoys near-universal agreement among scholars as well as the general public that his works are among the greatest of humanity's cultural expressions, and that we all should know and understand them. But, simply put, Shakespeare is difficult. His language and cultureˇXthose of Elizabethan England, 400 years agoˇXare greatly different from our own, and his poetry, thick with metaphorical imagery and double meanings, can be hard to penetrate. Now, in the 24 revealing lectures of How to Read and Understand Shakespeare by award-winning Professor Marc C. Conner of Washington and Lee University, you can learn a set of interpretive tools, drawn from the texts themselves, that give you direct insight into Shakespeare's plays. These guiding principles allow you to follow the narratives of the plays as they unfold, with a clear understanding of how the plays function and fit together. The tools you learn are yours for years of enjoyment of these monumental treasures of our culture.
Introduced by Niccolo Machiavelli, scenes from Shakespeare's Henry VIII depict the king's struggle to consolidate power as absolute monarch. Through highlighting the play's subtext, the film reveals how Cardinal Wolsey, Queen Catherine of Aragon, and Anney Boleyn, each played their own game of power.
The Jacobean Age was fraught with anxiety: man's doubts about the world, the after-world, and his place in them. The drama of the period is revealed in this film through scenes from Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well and Webster's The Duchess of Malfi.
Shakespeare: Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies introduces the plays of Shakespeare and explains the achievement that makes Shakespeare the leading playwright in Western civilization. The key to that achievement is his "abundance," says Professor SaccioˇXnot only in the number and length of his plays, but also in the variety of experiences they depict, the multitude of actions and characters they contain, the combination of public and private life they deal with, the richness of feelings they express and can provoke in an audience and in readers, and the fullness of language and suggestion.
Shakespeare is the leading playwright, and probably the leading writer, in Western civilization. His works are one of the greatest achievements of the human mind and spirit. And yet, for far too many of us, they remain a closed book. Why?
Unready Minds? Missing Notes
Too often, we were force-fed Shakespeare as adolescentsˇXwhen life has not yet unfolded for us. Even for adults, the language of Shakespeare is 400 years old: reading or seeing a play may seem like listening to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and missing half the notes.
Ironically, the crowds that filled the Globe to witness his plays in Elizabethan times imbibed his words with ease. Perhaps we've forgotten how to listen to his language, and we approach his works unaware of the larger cultural, political, and spiritual context that give them their full, rich meaning. Professor Peter Saccio is well suited to bring you back into Shakespeare's world, and tune you into what he calls "Shakespeare's wavelength."
Pure Language, Pure Feeling
Professor Saccio devotes two of his lectures to Shakespeare's sonnets, fusing an understanding of their technical elements (meter, rhyme, alliteration, pacing) with an appreciation for the torrent of variegated feeling that underlies them.
The sonnets are often misunderstood to be an autobiographical narrative of Shakespeare's personal life. Actually, they are something much greater than that. John Keats praised Shakespeare for his "negative capability," his capacity to inhabit and explore multiple moods, emotions, and perspectives, without committing to one. Only someone of his level of sensitivity and imagination could write on one occasion:
Kind is my love today, tomorrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence
...only to fume in another sonnet:
Th'expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjur'd, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame
Love's Language
But Shakespeare had much more to say about love than could be contained in the space of a sonnet. Professor Saccio shows how he used comedies, romances, and even tragedies to reflect on love's every facet:
In A Midsummer Night's Dream, the characters' speeches reveal love as absurd, irrational, changeable, wonderful, and dangerous. The characters woo in a distant forest, away from society, lest their foibles undo the conventions of society. Amid piquant barbs on sexual politics, we find farcical spectacle, as the goddess Titania pledges undying love to the peasant Bottom, who is transformed into a donkey!
The Winter's Tale explores the dark side of our passions, as irrational affection becomes unreasoning jealousy and rage. King Leontes destroys his family with rash accusations of infidelity. Repentant, he must seek the love that expresses itself in forgiveness, and which contains a touch of magic.
As You Like It is a study of lovers themselves, and the different kinds that make the world go round. You'll meet the earthy Touchstone and Audrey, the witty and erotically charged Celia and Oliver, the Petrarchan formalists Phebe and Silvius, and our heroes Rosalind and Orlando, who know love is madness, but embrace the sweet nonsense nonetheless.
Action and the Meaning of History
Shakespeare was acutely aware of the importance of history, and not just of events, but of ideas. His tragedies and histories are meditations on the changing world around him, and of the eternal issues of character and human nature. Professor Saccio closely examines this world where actions and ideas intersect, and raises profound and unexpected questions:
Richard III is a classic villain, but somewhat disturbingly, also a Renaissance figure. Schooled in Machiavellian tactics of self-promotion, deception, and betrayal, he is a cautionary example of what it means to be a "self-made" man. Yet he says he is "determinate" to be a villain. Is this a Calvinist nod to the limits of free will and responsibility?
Henry V is often seen as the anti-Hamlet, a man of action and a military leader. But is he, or any king, really capable of making his own history? The son of a usurper, he is oppressed by the weight of history, of expectation, and by his own overwhelming sense of responsibility. In a famous scene, he tries on the crown of his dying father, but is this ambition, or an attempt to wrestle with his own inexorable fate?
Can a man be a hero without a cause or a country? In Coriolanus, Shakespeare takes the great ideal of the action hero and complicates it. Spurned by Rome, Coriolanus turns upon it, only to realize that there is no victory for a man outside his polis. He yields to his mother's plea to spare Rome, knowing that its enemies will punish his weakness. "O my mother," he cries, "You have won a happy victory to Rome; But for your son,ˇXbelieve it, O, believe it, Most dangerously you have with him prevail'd."
Of His Time, ahead of His Time
One of the great rewards of reading Shakespeare is the discovery of his relevance to our modern world. Throughout the course, Professor Saccio offers startling and novel analyses of the plays, in addition to explicating more traditional views:
The Tempest is widely remembered as Shakespeare's curtain call, a last display of his poetic magic before leaving the stage, with the wizard Prospero acting as Shakespeare's double. But The Tempest also wrestled with a myriad of contemporary issues. It was written at the height of the Age of Exploration, and Shakespeare made use of reports from the Island of Bermuda and the Virginia Colony. It can be seen as a critique of colonization and European rapacity, of modern man's capacity to alter and exploit nature. Prospero's effort to tutor the native Caliban strongly echoes the civilizing mission of many European colonizers.
To read Shakespeare is to take a daunting journey into a perpetually undiscovered country that reinvents itself with every visit. But with Professor Saccio as your guide, it will become a familiar pleasure. To quote Caliban:
Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears...
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.
The film holds, "as t'were, the mirror" up to the Middle Ages, for the medieval image of the world survived into the Elizabethan Age. The king-father symbolizing the authority of the past, primogeniture, astrology, and the dowry are all representative of the medieval culture as reflected in Shakespeare's King Lear.
Footage of Stratford-upon-Avon and a depiction of the globe Theatre provide an understanding of the elements that influenced the style of Shakespeare's Macbeth.
Shakespeare's contributions to stage and language are unequaled. In what Professor Clare R. Kinney calls the "power and audacity of his poetry and stagecraft," Shakespeare has left audiences breathless these past four centuries. His artistry is as evident in moments of insensate rage, as when King Lear dares Nature to do her worstˇX
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drenched our steeples,
drowned the cocks!
as it is in moments of heartbreaking tenderness, as when Othello steals a few last kisses from the sleeping and innocent wife he is about to murder for the adultery he imaginesˇX
Ah balmy breath, that doth almost persuade
Justice to break her sword! One more, one more. ...
But beyond his astonishing feats of language and dramatic impact, Shakespeare also left us a legacy, crafted from his experiences and explorations, of suffering and transgression in his six great mature tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus.