Shakespeare and Community: Emerging Voices

This lecture was the second in a series of three events to mark the 10th anniversary of the Notre Dame London Shakespeare Lecture in Honor of Stanley Wells. Fr. Jim Lies, C.S.C, Senior Director for Academic Initiatives and Partnerships at the Notre Dame London Global Gateway, gave introductory remarks to Professor Scott Jackson, Mary Irene Ryan Family Executive Director at the University of Notre Dame. Jackson highlighted that the panel discussion “seeks to redefine what 21st century Shakespeare in performance can mean for different specialized communities”. Jackson then introduced the panelists: Rowan Mackenzie, Artistic Director of Shakespeare UnBard; Janice Valls-Russell, Principal Research Associate, Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier; Florence March, Professor in Renaissance and Restoration Drama, Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier; Abigail Rokison-Woodall, Lecturer in Shakespeare and Theatre at the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham.

Jackon invited all the panelists to discuss their current projects:

• Abigail Rokison-Woodall is working on a project called Signing Shakespeare to see how they can make practical, active, rehearsal room pedagogy accessible to young deaf people.
• Florence March and Janice Valls-Russell are working on Shakespeare and Citizenship, a program co-led by the Institute for Research on the Renaissance, the Neo-Classical Age, and the Enlightenment (IRCL) together with Montpellier’s international theatre festival, Printemps des Comédiens. The program involves six secondary schools in Montpellier with different social profiles, to have students with various backgrounds meet and interact, which they would not have any opportunity to do otherwise.
• Rowan Mackenzie, through Shakespeare UnBard, aims to work with people who have been marginalized predominantly through being connected to the criminal justice system. 

Jackson then moved the conversation to “Applied Shakespeare” which draws its very name from Applied Theatre by Augusto Boal. Applied Theatre has had a radical effect on the way we think about the function of theatre in contemporary society, and to transform audiences into active participants in the theatrical experience. Boal argues that traditional theatre is oppressive since spectators usually do not get a chance to express themselves, it is a very one-sided transaction. Therefore, when we study Shakespeare, “we must be conscious that we’re not studying the history of the theater but learning about the history of humanity. We are discovering ourselves and, above all, we are discovering that we can change ourselves and, hence, change the world.” The discussion then turns to how Applied Shakespeare shows through each of the panelists’ current work and how, in spaces of historically excluded or specialized populations, they craft ensemble, bringing people together around Shakespeare and, more broadly, theater in general.

Finally, Jackson asks each of the panelists what are their desired program outcomes:

• For Rowan Mackenzie it’s very much about giving people the opportunity to take back and to develop positive autonomy, about people developing transferable skills, their sense of being able to work within a team, and their sense of pride in what they can do going forward in the future.
• Abigail Rokison-Woodall’s program started to think about how engaging with Shakespeare might help deaf children with other areas of their lives such as confidence, social and emotional cognition. Working in combination with a team of deaf theatre practitioners, as well as deaf children, they’ve actually become just as interested in how sign language can open up Shakespeare for everyone. The program aims to provide access and resources to teachers to ensure that deaf children are actually getting the opportunity to study Shakespeare, rather than simply being told it’s too difficult.

Through Shakespeare and Citizenship Florence March and Janice Valls-Russell, aim to encourage the students to re-appropriate verbal and body language as non-violent ways to express themselves. It contributes to reintroduce their relationship to language, not only as a means of communication but as a cultural and artistic medium. So that Shakespeare, and beyond Shakespeare, those involved revisit their relationship to their own language as a poetic literary language as a medium to convey their own culture. The year-long project is rounded off by a school festival embedded in Montpellier’s Printemps des Comédiens mainstream festival with all six classes coming together to perform and to view each other’s work. All the students involved in the project are also invited to visit the venues and discover the working world of a theater festival and a whole array of training and job opportunities throughout the year. Lastly, they hope that the experience of Shakespeare and civic theatre opens up spaces for contemporary issues to be discussed and for building up debates as a non-violent alternative way of negotiating with others. The plays are chosen by the teachers and theatre practitioners often to fit their schools’ educational agenda on civic values and mutual respect, such as addressing tolerance and anti-semitism through Merchant of Venice, gender and role-playing through Twelfth Night, sexual harassment, and female agency through Measure for Measure

Visit the event page for more.