A Comment on the Compressed Versions of Shakepearean Plays for Performance by My Students--- and My Efforts in Modeling K-12 Excellence in the New Salem Educational Initiative

Every summer for the last half-decade I have taken two groups of about five students each to the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona.  Prior to attending a play, those going on this trip read the entire play in Shakespeare’s original Elizabethan language while listening to my careful explanations of every word in every line of the play---  and participating in discussions of character and themes.

 

For the purpose of presentation of that same play at our annual banquet in the New Salem Educational Initiative---  since the full play would run about three hours---  I edit the original play, compressing the script while maintaining the original Elizabethan language for a 30-minute presentation in the context of a banquet that itself runs about three hours.

 

I insist that students attending a Great River Shakespeare or other stage production read the original play and study the work in its entirety with me.  An exception occurred a couple of years ago, when I realized that a production of Othello was soon to end at the Guthrie;  with limited time, I put together a compressed version, longer than those presented at banquets but shorter than the original, using this for discussion and preparation for attendance of the Guthrie performance.

 

As you scroll on down this blog, you will first come to this version.  You can then get a sense of how I further edit and compress these plays for performance at the banquet, making very tough decisions as to the elimination of lines while maintaining the essence of these greatest of all dramatic works of art.    

 

In reading these next items on my blog, you may also consider my total dedication to the K-12 Revolution.  My effort is a 16-18 hour per day commitment to model excellent education and then press decision-makers at the Minneapolis Public Schools to extrapolate my principles in the New Salem Educational Initiative for application to the overhaul of curriculum and teacher training in that iteration of the local school district.

 

Please be attentive both to my editorial processes and my modeling of educational excellence as you scroll on down to read the next two items on this blog.