Teaching Shakespeare's Plays

FAIN: FS-256885-17

Texas State University - San Marcos (San Marcos, TX 78666-4684)
Joseph Falocco (Project Director: March 2017 to December 2019)

A one-week seminar for sixteen college and university faculty on the language and staging of Shakespeare’s drama.

“Overcoming ‘Shakesfear’” will take place at the Curtain Theatre, a reconstructed Elizabethan playhouse on the outskirts of Austin, Texas. It will feature the participation of a company of student actors from Texas State University’s nationally recognized Theatre program. The objective of this Seminar is to familiarize participants with Shakespeare’s language and the original theatrical conventions with which his plays were first staged in order that they may better teach Shakespeare to their students. The seminar will involve some lectures by the Director and demonstrations by the student acting company and Visiting Faculty. As much as possible, however, seminarians will actively participate by paraphrasing, scanning, and rhetorically analyzing a piece of Shakespearean text and then presenting their analysis to the group; editing a Shakespearean scene and supervising its performance; and staging a different Shakespearean scene that poses specific challenges related to the architecture