"Shakespearience" was a unified performance from Year 11 Drama students of selected extracts from Shakespeare's tragedies. The evening was a wonderful success, as the Drama students met the challenge of their task commendably.
See photos below.
Guess what! - Reading Shakespeare is GOOD for the brain!
Scientists have shown that reading the Bard and other classical writers has beneficial effects on the mind. They say that their research provides valuable lessons for the education system and for all those who want to keep their minds active.
Works from Shakespeare, Chaucer and Wordsworth challenge readers because of their unusual words, tricky sentence structure and the repetition of phrases.
English professors at Liverpool University who teamed up with neuroscientists armed with brain-imaging equipment found that this challenge causes the brain to light up with electrical activity. Professor Philip Davis, who led the study at the university's department of English, said: "The brain appears to become baffled by something unexpected in the text that jolts it into a higher level of thinking."
So imagine if you commit Shakespeare to memory as our Shakespearience girls did, how brilliantly active your brain would be!
Notice the difference in the two brains below!
Congratulations to all the Year 11 students who participated in SHAKESPEARIENCE.
15 comments:
What an honour it was to be able to study and perform Shakespeare. I have been a fan of Shakespeare's for a long time and being able to perform one of his historic plays made my passion for his plays to grow.It used to be so hard to even read Shakespeare before with all its weird language and phrases but by studying the text, it really makes you appreciate the mastermind and what he offers to the theatre world. My group and I had a fantastic time performing Shakespeare and hope that we get the chance to study and perform even more amazing stories of Shakespeare next year. I'm really looking forward to year 12 drama and hope that we have even more funn than what we've had this year.
Nikita :-D
oh wow, I’ve always loved Shakespeare, but never in my wildest dreams did I ever guess I’d be able to perform it! Everyone helped each other out when they needed it, (thanks to a certain someone who did our lighting with only 5 mins preparation!) and it was fantastic how we all rallied together and made the evening one of the best drama performances that we've shared. Grade 12 with the group of people that we have is going to be amazing!
ashlei
Wow girls, what a night, drama drama drama…oh and then there were the performances! You all performed superbly, evoking an array of emotions and entrancing your audience (I am not ashamed to say that I was on the verge of tears at times). With each performance that I watch, I grow more in awe of your professionalism and theatrical finesse. Continue to support each other and work constructively and you will find that you surpass your expectations. Thanks for thinking of me and inviting me to your performance, I cannot wait to see what you have in store for Yr 12!
Love
Ms Sciacca
I thought the night was great! Even though I was not initially thrilled about performing and remembering the lines of Shakespeare! It turned out to be a very fun and rewarding experience. Everyone really did a great job with all the performances. It was heaps of fun preparing for the night with my group. Overall I think the night was a great success and I look forward to drama in yr 12! P.s it was great that Ms Sciacca came! And Ms you have to come back to corpus!!!
Natalie
Preforming Shakespeare was one of the hardest, cruelest, nerve-racking, time consuming, challenging, incredible, demanding, yet one of the best experiences i have ever had the opportunity to take part in. Some people dont understand how difficult it is just to read shakespeare and be able to deconstruct his language and comprehend what it is he is trying to convey to the audience. But once you have that understanding, shakespeare is the most beautiful peice of art ever written.
For me to have the chance to undertake one of his amazing characters, was an hounor on my part. I loved every stressful moment of this shakespear unit, and would encourage anybody to take up the challenge of even just reading one of his poems.
Thank you for this opportunity, and thank you to everyone who took part in the night, you girls should be so pround because you all did so well. And to all the parents and friends who turned up, and Ms Fletcher,it is your support that encourages us to be the best that we can.
So thank you so much
Naomi
What a wonderful night! I have thoroughly enjoyed studying and examining Shakespeare and in particular, Hamlet. Leaning the lines was at first quite challenging but as time went on it became, as Ms Fletcher says, ‘like cracking a code’, making it easier to understand and empathize with the characters.
Well done, girls! Although I only got to see a couple of performances, on the night and on the DVD, it was clear that all the groups performed really well.
I was so surprised to see how thoroughly everyone had learnt such difficult and challenging lines.
Overall the night was a highly enjoyable experience and I am, without a doubt, looking forward to the highs and lows of next year’s Shakesperience performances!
Ruth T
I am a huge fan of Shakespear and I was more than happy to perform Hamlet!
im not going to say it was easy, because it wasnt but it wasnt impossible to try either.
I had a great time working with my group and performing it on the night, so many people had different ideas and approaches on characters, sets and deleivery of the text that made every performance awesome!
our group did have a little trouble with finding our props and setting up sets, but you learn from your mistakes.
looking forward to grade 12 drama!
p.s Ms Sciacca thank you soooooo much for coming!, it was really good seeing you again
Highly grateful for the opportunity to study and perform Shakespeare.
The night was a huge success and it was well worth all the hours and hard work we put in.
I know we all learnt so much from the night and the knowledge we've accumulated through our studies of Shakespeare's works, will no doubt come in great use throughout life.
Congrats girls on all our hard work, and I'm sure I'm not the only person looking forward to participating in Drama classes as a Grade 12 student =]
-Claire
I may not be the biggest fan of Shakespeare, but learning how to understand the words and the characters and actually perform it was absolutely fantastic!
There may have been a few mishaps throughout the night, but they did nothing to diminish how brill the performances were overall.
The various interpretations just show how different we all are
and how amazing the year 12 performances will be =)
I admit, I was a bit worried about doing Shakespeare for our tragedy topic this term at first, but as soon as we got into it, I was really glad that we got to.
Even though we all did Shakespeare's Macbeth for english in year 10, the experience and knowledge now gathered from it was a totally different experience and new found understanding of it ( and this time I got to dress up in fancy shakespeare clothes =D).
Watching the movie first also helped me obtain a better understanding of the text, as even though the language isn't always understood, you can guess or eventually pick up from the actions, tones in voices, gestures and settings, what is going on. That's why I found it was easier to include these for when we had to read the text and then choose scene/s to perform, not just for us, but for the audience watching as well.
Sure, usually learning mass amount of lines, in time, is easy. However, in shakespeare... well lets just say it's just that little bit more challenging. Along with trying to fit 5 groups in the one drama room for practice. However, I think we all pulled it off in the end and we should be proud of our efforts in creating a true, Shakespearience. ^___^
p.s. i can never publish my comments as anything but anonymous >.< so incase your wondering...it's Zjana =]
What a night! It was certainly one to remember!!! Being able to perform Shakespeare was an amazing opportunity...and one that i will never forget. Getting the opportunity to perform plays by one of the greatest writers of all time who used the most amazingly complicated language to describe everything was highly challenging but also equally rewarding. I dont think i have ever been so confused or entranced as when i was reading through Shakespeares use of language.
To my group...Ashlei!,Kaitlyn and Michelle!...I love you guys!!! Being able to perform Shakespeare's 'King Lear' with you was awesome!!! And im really really sorry i had to kill you all!! but to be fair, I (Goneril) did kill myself too...if that helps! ;)
On the whole the night was full of tears (obviously cos they were Tragedy plays..lol), laughs, stress, more tears, and then hugs of relief and congratulations once it was all over!. Thank you to everyone that made that night possible, it was so much fun to be apart of and it really has enriched my drama experience and understanding of different use of language. I can't wait for year 12 Drama with you girls...its gonna be Awesome!!!
Alice W.
It was probably one of the moments were i just wanted to get invisible, but it went on and it wasnt as bad as i thought.
When i found out that we had to perform Shakespear i was truly afraid about it because it sounds to my like a complelty different language than englsih i didnt understand anything
but then when we started workin in our groups they explained it to me and helped me to understand it
it was so mmuch fun practising and i wish the performance would have been better but still it was a great night :)
magda
OMG your costumes looked fantastic. (hahaa)
i seriously wish that i saw your performances cause i heard that they were all really good :)
well done
OMG i loved shakespeare night, the turnout was sooo good. There were many nervous actors backstage that were preparing to present to the audience a wonderful show! The costumes were really fun and it was exciting to do something different like shakespeare, sometimes it felt as if we were learning an other language.
But overall the night was fun and enjoyable for everyone (Y).
kaitlyn =]
YAY. I had so much fun performing Shakespeare. It was the most challenging task this year, but the most fun. I am looking forward to further studying the plays of Shakespeare, as his work is truely great. Studying Shakespeare in detail has helped me understand Shakespearian language, and how lives were back then. Im not going to lie, it was soooo nerve racking, but totally worth it.
overall, the night gets an A+ from me (Y)
THANKS FOR COMING MISS SCIACCA.
-sunny.
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