The play’s the thing

Boring. Irrelevant. Not for me. Too highbrow. We know these can be responses to the question “What does Shakespeare mean to you?” Yet Shakespeare is so important that he’s still the only named writer that all young people in England and Wales have to study and, if we’ve gone through a traditional schooling system, he’s the one artist with whom we all share a common link. How do arts organisations such as the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) ensure that Shakespeare’s work remains fresh, alive, challenging and relevant to contemporary audiences of all ages and backgrounds? How do we avoid a feeling that Shakespeare’s work isn’t relevant to twenty-first century lives and experiences, something that we pursue in formal education only because someone else has decided it’s good for us?
All the world’s a stage
One way is to look internationally. Across every continent artists, writers, directors, musicians and actors are continually drawn to Shakespeare for inspiration and challenge. He, uniquely, is owned by many different countries and cultures, and seeing his work through the lens of different cultural experiences challenges our own preconceptions about meaning. We saw examples of this in the RSC’s Complete Works Festival with productions ranging from an experimental ‘Macbeth’ by Polish company Song of the Goat, to Kuwaiti director and playwright Sulayman Al Bassam’s ‘Richard III: An Arab Tragedy’ and Yukio Ninagawa’s Japanese ‘Titus Andronicus’. Setting Shakespeare alongside new work also helps us to see contemporary resonances, either through work directly inspired by a particular text (for example, Roy Williams used ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ as the source for his new play ‘Days of Significance’ touring the UK this autumn) or inspired by a sense of epic story-telling (for example, Natal’ia Vorozhbit’s ‘The Grain Store’, which the RSC will première in September). We’re also deepening the relationship between living writers and Shakespeare by embedding Tarrell McCraney, our international playwright in residence, in the rehearsal process, getting him to write for an ensemble of actors just as Shakespeare would have done. 

The whining schoolboy
The notion of Shakespeare as ‘new work’, approaching each text as if the ink is still wet on the page, is a strong narrative we can apply to work with young people. Each play has a rich performance history to explore, but when we are working actively on the texts the sense of possibility that comes from young people moving around, speaking the words, exploring the feelings and ideas that emerge, is liberating and exciting. For example, the simple question of whether a scene is public or private brings with it many possible choices and consequences. That’s a genuinely creative and inspiring context in which to learn and, arguably, it is Shakespeare more than any other writer that offers this opportunity. Michael Boyd, Artistic Director of the RSC, often talks about Shakespeare being a Trojan horse that we can use to achieve lots of different objectives. As well as learning about the plays, students are exploring questions about the world we live in: the nature of leadership, family loyalty, parental control, dictatorship. They are also developing more sophisticated communication skills in order to be able to express their responses to these human dilemmas. By making choices about the text and realising that meaning isn’t fixed but interpreted, young people can then transfer this sense of possibility to their own lives. The removal of the Key Stage 3 Standard Assessment Tests in October 2008 means that teachers are finally free to approach Shakespeare’s plays in ways that offer young people these broader opportunities for learning through Shakespeare.
Part of the way that the RSC responds to the challenge of keeping Shakespeare fresh for new audiences is through the work we do with children and young people. In March 2008 we launched an online manifesto for Shakespeare called ‘Stand up for Shakespeare’. Intended for a schools audience, we asked teachers and students to sign up online if they supported the three manifesto recommendations to: “Do Shakespeare on your feet, See it Live, and Start it Earlier”. We want young people to go on to form a lifelong relationship with Shakespeare and develop a love of theatregoing. We know from observing teaching in primary and secondary schools that these approaches help that to happen. Higher Education institutions also recognise the necessity of applying active learning techniques to Shakespeare study. The University of Warwick runs a third-year English Literature undergraduate module called ‘Shakespeare without chairs’, where students actively explore the interpretive choices of the text. Our Stand up for Shakespeare campaign ended on Shakespeare’s birthday this year (23 April) and almost 14,000 people from all walks of life and from all over the world have signed up in support. This tells us something about the excitement that Shakespeare generates and the lasting investment there is in his work across a spectrum of ages and social backgrounds.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Supporting this quiet revolution in the way that people perceive Shakespeare, we’re also transforming the performance space for Shakespeare’s work; the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre will open in 2010 with a democratic auditorium where actors and audience share one space. The digital revolution is a strong call to action to arts organisations, and we ignore the trend towards user-generated content at our peril. For example, we’re running a writing competition on Twitter to coincide with our production of ‘As You Like It’. Statistics from YouTube make compelling reading: more than a third of adults who use the Internet create content online and 57% of young people aged 12–17 make their own content to post to the web. Theatre websites need to speak to existing audiences and cater for a new audience whose expectations around digital contact and content are high. However, these challenges are what encourage the RSC and other theatre companies constantly to find new ways of exploring Shakespeare, new ways of inviting audiences to share meaning with us, new ways of connecting and helping others connect with Shakespeare and engage with the world.