Shakespeare’s plays are the greatest in the English language, and in any language enjoying enduring popularity with audiences world-wide – despite the passage of time, the ravages of education, and the shortcomings of productions which so regularly trivialise, vulgarise and distort them, or simply succeed in boring audiences to death.

However, Shakespeare is being nudged out of our secondary schools and even our universities. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. Looking on the bright side, his works have been mangled by generations of appalling teaching that has succeeded in turning people off him for life. His words can turn to dust when exposed to the atmosphere of the classroom or lecture hall. They come alive and provide delight most of all when spoken on the stage. That is where they belong.

On the negative side, if the works are ignored by the education system, succeeding generations could go through life entirely unacquainted with them – to their great spiritual impoverishment.

I was recently on You Tube, Literature for students growing up in this generation, and came across the following skit:

Not only that! It seems there was more…

It awakened a great fear in me about the relevance of Shakespeare in a new generation of youth who are engaging less with real literature, preferring to seek knowledge and cultural nourishment through technology. This motivated me to set up the following ‘Educational Revival Of Shakespeare’ initiative.

The Reduced Shakespeare Company is a is a three-man comedy troupe known for taking long, serious subjects and reducing them into short, sharp comedies. We are looking for University and High School students to bring the delights of Shakespeare back into the education system, and create appeal in the younger generation.

Such a project requires several components:

• You must produce a short performance of a Shakespearean play of your choosing 2 – 5minutes in length.This performance must be a modern condensing of the whole play; the guts of each scene must re-written, capturing the vibe and themes of the play. You will need to think about the audience you are pitching to (modern), this will influence the way you perform the play (for example, a soap opera context would be fantastic for a tragedy like Romeo & Juliet)

• Accompanying this must be a a script with appropriate stage directions, along with a 600 word discussion of your alteration of the play, and an appreciation of Shakespeare by exploring interesting ideas, themes, language or characters found in your reading of the pla

• NoFear Shakespeare is a great website that translates Shakespeare’s text into modern English – this is a great resource in making the play more accessible to read. We recommend using this once you have chosen your play.

Last years winner was a Year 10 group from a school in Adelaide who reinterpreted Othello as a high school Rap, incorporating hip hop music and modernised the play in a fantastically original and entertaining way. Although a comic interpretation, it still managed to highlight the tragic nature of our human flaws, such as pride, in bringing about our downfall, a theme commonly explored by Shakespeare in many of his tragedies. The entry was highly commended by Baz Luhrman, a film director famous for his modern adaptation of the Romeo & Juliet. The script was performed by us, view the winning entry below:

The winning group will receive $1000, and an opportunity to tour with The Reduced Shakespeare Company on our ‘Shakespeare Competition Tour’ to the United Kingdom, where they will present their educational revival of Shakespeare at ‘The Globe Theatre’ in London.

Entries close at the end of July 2008, schools and Universities registered at this stage are as follows:

Asquith Boys High NSW
Asquith Girls High NSW
Cecil Andrews Snr High WA
Chisolm Catholic College QLD
Eastern Goldfields College WA
John Paul College WA
Lavalla Catholic College VIC
Myrtleford Secondary High VIC
NIDA NSW
Parramatta Marist High NSW
University of NSW
Victoria Point High School QLD

We are currently processing applications from 30 other schools from around Australia, Good luck to all entries!

The Reduced Shakespeare Company
Artistic Directors
2008

http://www.reducedshakespeare.com/index.php