How Shakespeare can shape our children
As a decades-old turf war raged in the northern California city of Richmond, a group of teenagers and young adults met to consider “Romeo and Juliet.” It wasn’t the story’s romance that resonated with students at an after-school arts program. It was the violence.
As the students collaborated to produce a modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s play about young lovers snagged in a senseless feud, they found echoes of the classic tragedy in their offstage lives.
This week marks the Bard’s birthday, as well as the anniversary of his death, and as University of Houston professors specializing in Shakespeare, we understand that many people find his work timeless. But it is also urgent.
“Romeo Is Bleeding,” Jason Zeldes’ documentary about the young artists from California, reminds us that literature — even from 425 years ago — provokes passionate responses in students. Our job is to use Shakespeare to provoke — and to connect.
The artists created their own production of “Romeo and Juliet” for today’s times, writing spoken-word poetry for each scene, set in their school and neighborhood. No one can look away as the performers witness deaths and meaningless violence even as they work toward opening night.
We invite everyone, but especially our colleagues who teach literature in Houston-area schools, to the screening for proof that student self-expression can be empowered by great literature in a classroom.
That power isn’t limited to “Romeo and Juliet.” We created the Teaching Shakespeare in Houston project at UH to support teachers and counteract public school accountability systems that pressure teachers to focus on test-taking strategies and reduce literature to short passages, decoupled from the work’s larger meanings.
Students need more than lectures and modern American translations to connect to Shakespeare and other historical literature. What students find meaningful is not a universal cliché but a specific recognition: That is my life. That is how I feel about it.
Shakespeare shouldn’t be about memorizing a few lines of poetry, but about incorporating that poetry into lives defined by high-stakes testing, social media and, yes, random and brutal violence.
Rich instruction connecting students’ lives to literature and the arts should not be reserved for only the most privileged students.
Schools with low accountability ratings should not assume that Shakespeare plays are not for them, or resort to formulaic writing assignments and multiple-choice questions. Teachers need resources that encourage students to both be part of literary traditions and respond in new ways themselves.
Jack Yates High School in Houston’s Third Ward offered a powerful example of that in December, with the premiere of the student-driven original production, “Gun Violence: The New Normal.” Audience members and panelists at a follow-up discussion included several mothers of Yates students who had recently been killed; one mother lost two sons in separate shootings.
Yates theater teacher Margo Hickman says students approached her about a productive way to express their grief, anger and hope. They shaped the script from this desire for creative expression, with a simple but potent message: Stop the violence. Ten of her students have been killed in the eight years she has taught at Yates, said Hickman, who will be part of a discussion after the screening of “Romeo Is Bleeding,” along with representatives from Writers In The Schools (WITS) and the UH SHX Club, made up of undergraduate students.
Academics and the arts community in Houston can support teachers by connecting them to resources and sustaining a dialogue about improving all of our schools and neighborhoods.
We’ve studied expert Shakespeare teachers in high schools and colleges. They know the benefits of building inclusive communities around Shakespeare that are attuned to diversity. Shakespeare’s texts after all are riddled with invectives, jokes and innuendos about women, Jews, blacks, Turks, Muslims, gays, the disabled and others. The words of the plays matter. Students need to read, watch and enact the lines about rage and love and deceit and other human conditions, recognizing their relevance in a place as diverse as Houston.
His plays are not exclusive to the ivory tower. The lessons of “Romeo Is Bleeding” show us that they are, instead, the stuff of real life. Ann Christensen is an associate professor of English at the University of Houston. Laura Turchi is an assistant professor at the UH College of Education.