Shakespeare in the house

LAUSD students working on fresh approaches to Shakespeare

To be honest, this blog has been quiet for the past couple of years because, although I've been working harder on teaching than I ever had, I didn't have a lot that I felt I could or should share with my fellow teachers.  The journey was largely personal, finding my own way integrating myself into a high-expectations inner city high school.

But this week I am embarking on the kind of project that I went into teaching in order to do.  Let me backtrack.  One of the reasons I was brought into American History High School in Newark was to kickstart efforts at developing a drama organization, which is as essential to a full-service high school as having at least one significant sports team per quarter and a functioning music program.  To begin with, these programs are often the only thing that pull some students into school, students who may be struggling academically, socially or emotionally.  It gives them a place of belonging and very specific and authentic tasks to perform.  And the tasks themselves teach a lot about working in groups, meeting deadlines, solving problems and accepting responsibility.  They are not "extras" in high school--they are core learning experiences.

But we are a magnet school in an urban environment wrestling with issues of poverty and crime and it is no small matter for students to be able to stay after school four afternoons a week to participate in a conventional school play rehearsal schedule.  This issue has stymied our efforts to build an effective program, despite having many talented and engaged students.  (I even had a student win an acting scholarship in a Rutgers-based competition even without our group having completed a single production for the year.)

But-- we have an excellent video program led by a fine teacher, Jason Lee.  In his first full year on campus, several writers and directors of note emerged, and one of them completed this short film which has won praise from literally all over the world.


And the young woman who wrote and directed this film is not our only talented filmmaker.  So I have this data floating around in my brain when the other weekend my wife and I are watching Joss Whedon's adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing (a play I have directed myself), which he and his wife shot in their house with their own money with their friends.


I had one of those moments of synthesis (appropriate, since it is one of our goals this year to teach our students when and how they are performing synthesis) and realized that if we could not stage a play continuously on the stage, we could FILM one.  It could be done piece-by-piece, a few actors at a time, but in contrast with a video class project, in which the actors would be using an original student-written script, we could adhere to our agenda as a Drama club and engage with a classic text, applying our own experience and knowledge to it.

Of course, the play would have to be out of copyright in order for us to film it, not to mention adapt and cut it, but that just played to my own prejudices, which run toward exposing students to the Classical texts.  (Note to self -- write post about why our time with students is better spent addressing the great classic stories and texts and that applying the tools of storytelling to purely contemporary matters is better left to higher education, after students have fully absorbed our culture's own myths and archtypical narratives.)

I put a short list of Classics before the club members, including some Shakespeares and some Ancient Greeks.  There was a certain amount of interest in the contest of the poets in The Frogs by Aristophanes, which we were thinking of staging as a full-on rap battle.  (We may yet get to that one.)  But in the end, we turned to the play I expected to be the favorite, Romeo and Juliet, but not for the reasons we thought.  We stumbled over a new and exciting reading of the play which revolves around social matters very much on the front burner for us here in New Jersey, a reading which I am not quite ready to share publicly, partly because it may stir some controversy and partly because it is SO FREAKING BRILLIANT that somebody will probably try to steal it.

I am working on my own first pass with the script this weekend.  Happily, I've taught the play a few times and recently edited it for an uncompleted student production, so the text is a very familiar friend.  The plan is to shoot the whole film within our building, much the way Orson Welles's adaptation of The Trial was shot almost entirely in a single abandoned railway station in Paris.



I even have a frame story that sets up the all-school location concept, but I don't think I want to share that yet either.  I've sent our young director my first pass on Acts I & II for her to add her own creativity and if I can be finished with this rough pass in another week or so we can start casting.  Another adventure begins!

Inspiration

I have avoided blog posts composed of lists, as I think that is sort of a crutch, but this thought seized my mind a few days ago and won't let go. It probably relates to my other blog, 24 Times Per Second, which I maintain as a model for my Film Studies class. But these are some of the people who may have put my feet on the path they walk today, even though many of them are fictitious.

The topic: Most inspirational movie teachers (presented in no particular order)




1. Mark Thackeray - To Sir With Love (1967) This may be the first film I actually paid money to see a second time. (In those pre-video days that meant going to the movie theater twice.) One of the most riveting things about the character and the movie is that Thackeray realizes early on that he is doing everything wrong. I mean, everything. All his assumptions about the students, all his goals, everything is wrong. (Personally, I like that he is not a trained teacher, nor does this seem to be a career goal, but something that is getting him through a stretch in life.) What he arrives at by instinct, trial and error is what today is called authentic-based learning. Real-life skills and real-life goals. And the film re-defined "learning" for a generation--instead of absorbing mounds of data, learning to observe and process the world--meaning the people--around us. Leadership, empathy, responsibility, engagement, humility and self-worth are his subjects.


2. Dewey Finn in School of Rock (2003). First off, we notice his passion for his subject--once he discovers what that subject is. Then, he devises an extremely authentic task: form a rock band and play publicly and--competetively. As with any well-designed authentic learning, there are many ancillary benefits, learning to work cooperatively, acknowledging and celebrating differences, problem-solving, etc., etc. The other chief characteristic of Dewey is his resilience and refusal to allow setbacks to become defeats, an indispensable lesson for our students. (For contrast, see the real-life model for Dewey in the documentary Rock School. That deranged screaming maniac should not be allowed anywhere near children.)

3. Jaime Escalante in Stand and Deliver (1988). Escalante might call himself persistent--others might use the word "stubborn." Edward James Olmos does stubborn really well, as fans of Battlestar Galactica will tell you. Again, an authentic task is posed, that is, passing the AP Calculus Test, which though in itself inauthentic, will open the doors to college for these disadvantaged youth. Besides his persistence, Escalante tailors his teaching methods to his students' priorities, interests and learning styles. If it makes a difference, Escalante is a real person. And from the evidence in this film, he is a bad-a**.

4. Albert Cullum in A Touch of Greatness (2003). Cullum is the man who, in the early 1960's, taught 5th-graders to debate as to whether Shakespeare or Sophocles was the greater tragedian. Cullum is another one of those people who found himself teaching and made it part of the creative continuum of his life. This film is a documentary, and thank goodness it is, because no one would believe his accomplishments if you could not see them. His greatest lesson to his students was not to follow the path trod by everyone else, to find your own way.

5. Erin Gruwell in Freedom Writers (2007). What is remarkable about Gruwell's work is that she was not about bringing something new to the students, but teaching them to use what they already have and know to transform their own lives. This is the business of a writer; whatever their apparent subject matter, their actual subject is the self. The film, as a narrative film must do, shapes its subject matter in dramatic fashion, but nothing essential was altered.

6. Anne Sullivan in The Miracle Worker (1962). Let us say first that, while the Internet Movie Database lists three film adaptations of the William Gibson play, there is truly only one, the original with Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke. I saw this film in its initial release--one of my earliest movie memories, and the breakfast table battle sequence is seared in my memory. (I am privileged to teach the play in my freshman English classes.) Anne brings two gifts to her student: vision--the vision to see that there is a person inside that thrashing, destructive shell; and, again, stubborness--the stubborness (more politely, patience) to cultivate that prisoner and put her in touch with the rest of the world.



7. Rafe Esquith in The Hobart Shakespeareans (2005). Here is another nut who thinks 5th graders are ready for Shakespeare. If you don't believe it, you can see them performing Hamlet in this film. And the kids in question are from neighborhoods adjacent to those tough places in Los Angeles the Freedom Writers come from.

8. Leonard Bernstein on Omnibus. If anyone exemplifies the now-disfavored "sage on the stage" mode of teaching, it is Bernstein. The controversy goes on as to Bernstein's place in the musical firmament of the 20th century, but their can be no question that he was one of the finest teachers to be captured on film or tape. His great gift is being able to explain purely musical ideas to people without musical training. This requires the ability to get into another person's head, a person utterly different from yourself. Bernstein was always in touch with the universality of human life--a super-empathy appropriate for a super-teacher.



9. Richard Feynman in The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. One of the most significant physicists of the 20th century, Feynman had a reputation as "The Great Explainer." He believed that if a principle could not be explained in a freshman-level survey course, the principle was not fully understood. (He and Bernstein could have been buddies--especially since they were both Jewish New Yorkers!) Also Feynman brought an insatiable curiosity to everything. This is a guy who would take constant readings to find out at what temperature Jello set, or whether he would count to himself faster if his heart beat faster. Every man, woman and child, whether a science buff or not, should read Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman. By law.

So what are the qualities we value in our movie teachers? Patience, persistence, curiosity, empathy, being student-oriented and instinctively setting real-world [i.e., authentic] tasks for students to accomplish.

Perhaps in a later post, we'll look at Bad Movie Teachers...