Looking ahead: school workshops 2024
The TCC is partnering with some fantastic people and organisations to provide support to teachers and learners engaging with Shakespeare at South African schools next year. We will be encouraging multilingual, multimodal and multimedia educational experiences - in the classroom and on the stage.
The English Experience publishes educational resources for use at Independent Examinations Board (IEB) schools across South Africa. The Shakespeare guides produced by the English Experience are highly regarded. In October, TCC director Chris Thurman joined Malcolm Stone of the English Experience for a wide-ranging online discussion on “Othello in the Classroom” - you can download a summary here - and it was so well received that a second event is being planned for early in 2024. Watch this space!
Play the Knave is a Mixed Reality (MR) digital theatre game developed by Professor Gina Bloom and her colleagues at the University of California, Davis. Working with Lauren Bates of Educasions, Bloom has been piloting the use of the game as a teaching tool at a handful of Cape Town schools. Earlier this year, Bloom and Bates visited Johannesburg to present two workshops for teachers, at Wits University and Christ Church Preparatory School and College.
In 2024, TCC Schools Liaison Officer Dr. Linda Ritchie (who has just completed her doctoral research on “Translanguaging with ‘Monolingual’ Teachers and Heterogeneous Multilingual Learners: Forging New Pedagogies with Shakespeare”) will be introducing many more Johannesburg teachers to Play the Knave.
The theme for the Shakespeare Schools Festival South Africa in 2024 is “Liberating Our Histories”. Participating schools, drama groups and community youth groups are encouraged to “embark on a journey of cultural reclamation celebrating the rich tapestry of African heritage”. This includes a focus on translation, promoting the use of South African languages in bringing Shakespeare’s work to the stage.
The TCC will join the Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa in offering workshops for some of the teachers, translators and directors involved in next year’s festival.
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The Cape Town leg of the Shakespeare Schools Festival will take place at the Star Theatre at the Homecoming Centre from 1 - 20 May. Dates for Johannesburg, Durban, George and other hosting cities and towns will be released early in 2024.