Not all of us are inspired by classics and offering Shakespeare to a young audience can be a hard sell; however, judging from the attentive audience of Just Romeo and Juliet, our artists in residence nailed it! Not only did The Bell Shakespeare Theatre Company manage to capture us with their energetic performance, but they were able to decode Shakespeare’s mysterious language and teach us some stagecraft in the process. Students were invited to take part during the performance both on stage and as an audience. This experience has been the perfect provocation to inspire further learning about Shakespeare’s works, figurative language (metaphors, similes, hyperbole, etc.) and performance/stagecraft…this might be the perfect weekend to drag out the Baz Luhrmann classic of Romeo and Juliet!
The fun continued a few weeks later…The Australian Opera performed the Barber of Seville in English, providing students with yet another form of expression and creative story-telling.
