Shakespeare & Atwood in performance

Earlier in the term, Year 12 Advanced English were lucky enough to see a part-interactive seminar, part-performance run by Bell Shakespeare in collaboration with The University of Sydney. This session was directly linked to our HSC Module ‘Textual Conversations’ in which we are analysing Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ alongside Margaret Atwood’s ‘Hag-Seed’.

The symposium, which is a conference-type discussion of a particular topic, also incorporated performances by Bell Shakespeare’s ‘The Players’. These three actors performed key scenes and soliloquies from ‘The Tempest’ in order to demonstrate the central content of the play and the ideas presented during the lecture. This was really helpful in gaining insight into the play in an engaging way.

In particular, their portrayal of Shakespeare’s character Caliban in one of the scenes was really interesting; his characterisation and use of mannerisms was a very entertaining way of bringing this rascal-like character to life. Trying to act out these scenes in class, which whilst a fun way to engage with the play, is often challenging to navigate the complex dialogue of Shakespeare, this is why seeing live examples is so important. When studying the play, live scenes on stage are a helpful way to visually experience this and create a better understanding.

The speaker from Bell Shakespeare as well as a leading lecturer from the University of Sydney both provided great academic analysis and interesting discussion between the two texts. Everyone was able to take something out of the experience, whether that be contextual or conceptual ideas, quotes or even just by drawing our attention to important comparisons between the two texts. Because the session was presented in a dramatic way showing the relationship between text and drama, this kept us all engaged. The experience was very helpful in developing our understanding of this comparative study and will hopefully come through in our writing.  

Ilana S, Year 12