Grin & Tonic School
Season 2008
| BRISBANE & SOUTH EAST QUEENSLAND SCHOOL SHOWS | |
| SENIORS ... SHAKESPEARE’S WORD ... | |
| There’ll
be scenes included from your students’ study plays of course, but
our intention with SHAKESPEARE’S WORD in 2008 is not so much to
focus on the storylines of the great plays as on the range and
nature of the words used, the dialogue, and on how Shakespeare’s
adventurous use of language helps his characters ... and us ... to
express emotions and experiences more richly than ordinary everyday
words and colloquialisms can ever do. The four actors will play out “a day in the life” of four graduating students, four friends, about to enter an adult world, however in this hour-long program all their conversation, their verbal interaction, is drawn from Shakespeare scenes! There’ll be excerpts from MACBETH, AS YOU LIKE IT, HAMLET, OTHELLO, and several others too. In SHAKESPEARE’S WORD we’ll be giving attention to greetings, insults, expressions of joy, exhilarations, despairs, wit, rage, words of love and hate, inner ponderings, hilarity - all the range of experiences that Year 11 and 12 students confront. However all too often our young adults have only limited access to the expressive words by which they can articulate their experiences, either to themselves or to the outside world, and we want to show how Shakespeare helps! SHAKESPEARE’S WORD will be not unlike a popular television series, the difference being that all the words will be SHAKESPEARE’S WORDS ! Cool ... As always, we are looking at the longer term. As I’ve mentioned before with other Grin & Tonic programs, our intention for the work we do for your students is just as much for their broader life-education as it is for the shorter term goal of the coming examinations ! |
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| BRISBANE & SOUTH EAST QUEENSLAND SCHOOL SHOWS | |
| Juniors ... ROMEO AND JULIET... | |
| This
performance of ROMEO AND JULIET, shortened to approximately 55
minutes, will be specially geared to the interests and experiences
of teenage audiences, your years 8 to 10. The play is widely famous
as “the world's greatest love story”, but to me it seems that it
treats with love in a depth not always recognised, not only the love
of Juliet and Romeo for each other, but for love and all its
variations as lived in the characters of the Nurse, the parents, the
Friar, the friends. In short, the play is truly about love in a very
wide sense. It is central to the play’s love theme that messages go astray. In ROMEO AND JULIET messages are constantly being sent and received, some arrive, some get mislaid, some misunderstood, and at the critical moment, the Friar’s message to the banished Romeo, the crucial message that Juliet is alive does not get through at all, and so the play also treats of our frequent inability .... to get the message across! Therefore there is much here for young teenagers to connect with, to think about, to explore, and to enjoy. It is our plan to present the work [and to send you Teacher Notes regarding our Grin & Tonic understanding of it] in ways that let the irreplaceable experience of live theatre be comprehensible and marvellously enjoyable for your students. And by the way, to see our live production in parallel with a viewing of one of the ROMEO AND JULIET films is even better. The Zefirelli seems to me especially good as a treatment of Shakespeare’s play and the subtlety of the young lovers, but the Luhrmann version is also a fantastic film. No filmic image however can enliven like life itself, and it is in the presence of living theatre that the true experience lies. |
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| NORTH QUEENSLAND & CENTRAL QUEENSLAND SCHOOL SHOWS | |
| SENIORS ... SHAKESPEARE’S WORD ... | |
| There’ll
be scenes included from your students’ study plays of course, but
our intention with SHAKESPEARE’S WORD in 2008 is not so much to
focus on the storylines of the great plays as on the range and
nature of the words used, the dialogue, and on how Shakespeare’s
adventurous use of language helps his characters ... and us ... to
express emotions and experiences more richly than ordinary everyday
words and colloquialisms can ever do. The three actors will play “a day in the life” of three graduating students, three friends, about to enter an adult world, however in this hour-long program all their conversation, their verbal interaction, is drawn from Shakespeare scenes ! There’ll be excerpts from MACBETH, AS YOU LIKE IT, HAMLET, OTHELLO, and several others too. In SHAKESPEARE’S WORD we’ll be giving attention to greetings, insults, expressions of joy, exhilarations, despairs, wit, rage, words of love and hate, inner ponderings, hilarity - all the range of experiences that Year 11 and 12 students confront. However all too often our young adults have only limited access to the expressive words by which they can articulate their experiences, either to themselves or to the outside world, and we want to show how Shakespeare helps! SHAKESPEARE’S WORD will be not unlike a popular television series, the difference being that all the words will be SHAKESPEARE’S WORDS ! Cool ... As always, we are looking at the longer term. As I’ve mentioned before with other Grin & Tonic programs, our intention for the work we do for your students is just as much for their broader life-education as it is for the shorter term goal of the coming examinations! |
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| NORTH QUEENSLAND & CENTRAL QUEENSLAND SCHOOL SHOWS | |
| Juniors ... ROMEO, JULIET and FRIENDS ... | |
|
This
performance of ROMEO AND JULIET will be specially geared to the
interests and experiences of teenage audiences, your years 8 to 10.
The play is widely famous as “the world's greatest love story”, but
to me it seems that it treats with love in a depth not always
recognised, not only the love of Juliet and Romeo for each other,
but also for love in its many variations as lived in the characters
of the Nurse, the parents, the Friar, the friends. In short, the
play is truly about love in a very wide sense. |
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