SHAKESPEARE
THE TEMPEST
Company building
1. Boal handshakes: everyone moves around the group shaking hands and greeting each other by name but cannot let go of one hand until they’ve found the hand of the next person.
2. An island full of insults: Participants are invited to walk around the space. The teacher gives some participants a text scrap and invites them to greet others saying their line of text
What kind of island might this be where people talk to each other like this? What do we learn about what this island is like (repeated reference to monsters, etc)?
3. Name and gesture or What’s in a name: in a circle, everyone takes it in turn to say their name. Once they’ve said their name, everyone else decides what the name sounds like – is it solid, ethereal, long, short, full or hard or soft sounds. Once discussed, everyone agrees on how to perform and say the name, and then the next person is introduced. The teacher then explores names from The Tempest: Prospero, Ariel, Miranda and Caliban. Everyone discusses what the name sounds like, and shares information known about the character. Then the whole group agrees how to ‘perform’ the name. Why might Shakespeare choose particular names that sound a certain way? What do the names Ariel and Caliban tell us about the qualities of those characters?
4. Balancing the space: participants start moving around the space making sure that there are no gaps
5. Love and hate/Miranda/Caliban/Prospero: participants are asked to move around the space, and without telling anyone choose someone else in the room. This person is their enemy, and they must stay as far away from that person as they can at all times. Now a second person is chosen, again without telling anyone. This person is the one they love, secretly, and they must keep that person in sight at all times, whilst trying to avoid their enemy. Participants are asked to observe what happens and how they felt. Analogies are drawn with the characters in the play.
6. Go, stop, show us a: participants start moving round the space. The leader calls out a number and participants must huddle together as quickly as possible in that number, though inclusion is more important than the number itself. Then the leader asks participants to make images as follows: individuals – a magician; adjust the image in response to the line ‘Graves at my command have waked their sleepers’’: a father and daughter then adjust in response to ‘My daughter, my dear one’; then in threes, an argument; adjust the line in response to ‘this island’s mine’.
Play reflection: What initial impressions do we make based on these activities?
Understanding the backstory and meeting some key characters
Telling the backstory: How did Prospero and Miranda end up on the island. In small groups, participants are asked to bring to life one or more of the sections telling the backstory of how Prospero and Miranda came to be on the island. One person narrates whilst everyone else has to help bring the section alive.
Telling the backstory of how Prospero and Miranda came to the island.
1. Prospero and Miranda live on an island. Miranda has only the faintest of memories about how they came to the island. One day, Prospero explains...
PROSPERO: Twelve years since, Miranda, twelve years since
Thy father was the Duke of Milan and
A prince of power.
MIRANDA: O the heavens!
What foul play had we, that we came from thence?
2. Prospero had a brother, Antonio. Prospero increasingly handed over power to his brother so that he, Prospero, could spend more time in his library.
PROSPERO: The government I cast upon my brother
And to my state grew stranger, being transported
And rapt in secret studies.
3. Antonio abused Prospero’s trust. He manipulated the people of Milan so
that they became loyal to Antonio rather than Prospero. Antonio’s
ambition grew whilst Prospero continued with his studies.
PROSPERO: Me, poor man, my library
Was dukedom enough.
4. Prospero tells Miranda how Antonio plotted with the King of Naples to get rid of Prospero:
PROSPERO: This King of Naples, being an enemy
To me… hearkens my brother’s suit.
One night, Antonio opened the gates to the army of Naples and
PROSPERO: i’th’dead of darkness
The ministers for th’purpose hurried thence
Me and thy crying self.
5. Antonio and the King of Naples did not dare kill Prospero.
PROSPERO: They durst not,
So dear the love my people bore me.
6. Instead, Prospero and Miranda were put onto a badly equipped ship. They washed up on an island, saved partly by the supplies provided by a kind Neopolitan called Gonzalo:
PROSPERO: Out of his charity … did give us,
Rich garments, linens, stuff and necessaries.
Gonzalo also gave Prospero some of his books
PROSPERO: Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me
From mine own library with volumes that
I prize above my dukedom.
Introduce Caliban’s island speech:
Break the speech into sections and share around the class.
For example:
Be not afeard; / the isle is full of noises,/
Sounds, /and sweet airs, /that give delight /and hurt not./
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments/
Will hum about mine ears; /and sometime voices/
That, if I then had waked /after long sleep,/
Will make me sleep again;/ and then in dreaming,/
The clouds methought would open,/ and show riches/
Ready to drop upon me,/ that when I waked/
I cried to dream again.
Practise speaking sections clearly to an imaginary audience. By giving a few words to each student we can build up a chorus and everyone has a part in delivering the speech. Very quickly, everyone is speaking Shakespeare’s language.
Decide on a gesture to accompany your spoken word and add movement to your speech.
The movement can be entirely abstract and doesn’t need to relate to the words being said aloud. This way we create visual patterns and words together.
Development:
We are going to use the speech to create original drama.
We are going to add movement to our sections.
Choose key words from speech and learn the BSL gesture for the words.
Afraid / Sound / A thousand / Voice / Sleep / Dream / Cloud / Rain / Sound / Dream / Cry
Again
Choose a gesture and add two more moves to extend it.
Practise exploring the way the movement changes if you extend it or change the pace.
Appendix 4
As You Like It
This resource will use a range of strategies to introduce characters and narrative
Warm up – Pair Murder
Ask students to stand in a circle and ask them to repeat the following line from the play -
And in the greatness of my word, you die
Repeat until the line is familiar to the students.
Students bow their heads and say the first seven words looking at the ground. On the words “you die” they are to look up and stare at another student in the circle. If that student is looking directly back, then both students die and must vocalise a death as they fall to the ground and sit down.
Continue until only one or two students are alive.
Introducing the world of the play
Students walk the room. Leader calls out a number and students must form a group of that number as quickly as possible.
Ask groups to create freeze frame pictures with the following titles. Give the title and count down from 10 for each freeze.
• A jealous brother
• Best friends
• Betrayal
• Runaways
Ask students to suggest what we might expect from this story.
Developing the narrative
Hand out cards with the following storylines. One to each group or more if you have a smaller group. Students are to create freeze frames and to read the storyline as they perform each freeze.
• Duke Senior is a kind ruler of his country and is loved by his people
• He has a beautiful daughter, Rosalind, who loves to play with her cousin, Celia
• Duke Senior has an evil brother, Duke Frederick who is jealous of his brother
• Duke Frederick plans an evil take-over of the country with his army
• He banishes Duke Senior with his band of loyal followers to live in the forest
• He allows Rosalind to stay because she is Celia’s best friend
• A young man, Orlando, beats Duke Frederick’s top wrestler in a contest
• Rosalind falls in love with Orlando
• Duke Frederick is angry and decides to banish Rosalind
This is an effective method for all students to participate in storytelling. Leader could ask groups to add a small amount of movement to each freeze frame to turn them into short vignettes.
Engaging with dialogue
Hand out one of the following extracts to each group. This is an opportunity for the students to speak out loud the words and experiment with creating character. Leader may cut some lines so it becomes a shorter exchange. Ask the students to rehearse using different positions and levels to find which seems most effective. Ensure students have a clear understanding of meaning and intention.
Short scenes will enable the students to tackle the language without the scenes being too daunting. Repeated rehearsal will find some groups able to put down the script which will increase their confidence.
Groups can perform in sequence and afterwards students can identify how the actors used performance skills (facial expression, gesture, stance, movement, voice) effectively.
Extract 1
ROSALIND
Look, here comes the duke.
CELIA
With his eyes full of anger.
Enter DUKE FREDERICK, with Lords
DUKE FREDERICK
Mistress, dispatch you with your safest haste
And get you from our court.
ROSALIND
Me, uncle?
DUKE FREDERICK
You, cousin
Within these ten days if that thou be'st found
So near our public court as twenty miles,
Thou diest for it.
Extract 2
ROSALIND
I do beseech your grace,
Let me the knowledge of my fault bear with me:
Never so much as in a thought unborn
Did I offend your highness.
DUKE FREDERICK
Thus do all traitors:
If their purgation did consist in words,
They are as innocent as grace itself:
Let it suffice thee that I trust thee not.
Extract 3
ROSALIND
Yet your mistrust cannot make me a traitor:
Tell me whereon the likelihood depends.
DUKE FREDERICK
Thou art thy father's daughter; there's enough.
ROSALIND
So was I when your highness took his dukedom;
So was I when your highness banish'd him:
Treason is not inherited, my lord;
Or, if we did derive it from our friends,
What's that to me? my father was no traitor.
Extract 4
CELIA
Dear sovereign, hear me speak.
DUKE FREDERICK
Ay, Celia; we stay'd her for your sake,
Else had she with her father ranged along.
CELIA
I did not then entreat to have her stay;
It was your pleasure and your own remorse:
I was too young that time to value her;
But now I know her: if she be a traitor,
Why so am I.
Extract 5
DUKE FREDERICK
Firm and irrevocable is my doom
Which I have pass'd upon her; she is banish'd.
CELIA
Pronounce that sentence then on me, my liege:
I cannot live out of her company.
DUKE FREDERICK
You are a fool. You, niece, provide yourself:
If you outstay the time, upon mine honour,
And in the greatness of my word, you die.
Escape!
A group game of Grandmother’s Footsteps can help create a sense of tension that might be required for Rosalind and Celia to make an escape from the dangerous Duke Frederick.
Pin the following lines around the classroom walls
O my poor Rosalind, whither wilt thou go?
The duke hath banished me.
Shall we part, sweet girl? No.
Devise with me how we may fly.
I’ll go along with thee.
Why, whither shall we go?
To seek my uncle in the forest of Arden.
Alas, what danger will it be to us.
We’ll go along together.
I will follow thee to the last gasp.
​
Rosalind and Celia have to run away from Duke Frederick. Orlando also has to run away from the duke. Separately, they make their escape.
Choose your actors to play Rosalind, Celia and Orlando.
The rest of the group will provide the castle doors, walls and the forest trees and foliage that the characters have to pass through to escape. They will also provide the voice over of the characters planning their escape.
Put the characters at one end of the room. Ask the rest of the group to move into pairs and create doors, walls, fences, undergrowth with their bodies. This is the escape route that the characters must pass through.
Rosalind, Celia and Orlando make their journey of escape. As they move through obstacles ask the students to say the lines on the walls – repeating and over-lapping sentences to create a voice collage of lines from the play.
Contrast
Finally, Rosalind, Celia and Orlando have escaped the evil Duke Frederick.
Split the group in half and create two contrasting freeze frame images showing
1. The freedom they have found in the forest.
2. The scene in court after Frederick finds out his daughter has run away.
The aim of this workshop is to introduce the story and get the students engaged in the language of the play and to explore ways of creating the world of the play using physicality and group collaboration.