This course investigates the embodiment of Shakespeare’s plays on stage and screen, focusing on how performances (including adaptations, modernisations, and translations) continually transform his work for new audiences. By emphasising Shakespeare’s texts as living, evolving cultural entities, this course helps students understand how these plays are interpreted and reimagined by theatre- and film-makers across cultures.
Through the intertwined processes of analysing texts and scholarship, viewing productions, and creating a stage performance, students in this course will explore historical and contemporary staging practices, from the early modern theatres in London to the innovations of contemporary stage and screen productions. Drawing on the insights of respected theatre and film practitioners, students will consider the act of interpretation through acting, directing, designing, and stage managing Shakespeare’s plays.
Students will also stage a live production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth in the specific cultural and context of Hong Kong in the 21st century; active participation in the cast or crew is a mandatory and significant component of this course.
DRTP2003 develops students’ skills in the following areas:
• cultivating strong skills in literary and performance analysis;
• analysing both Shakespeare’s language and dramatic techniques;
• analysing how character can be translated from page to stage;
• explaining how changing historical and cultural circumstances shaped performance practices;
• examining how Shakespeare’s plays have been interpreted, reimagined, and reinvented by directors, performers, designers, and translators, particularly over the past century;
• employing performance practice through acting, designing and/or stage managing a live stage production.
- The following areas of enquiry will be covered in this course:
- understanding Shakespeare’s life, language, and historical/social/cultural context;
- encountering comic concerns, antitheses and transformations in A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- (i.e. urban/nature, restrictions/freedom, human/animal);
- addressing tragic disintegrations, antitheses and transformations in Macbeth
- (i.e. truth/falsehoods, peace/violence, natural/supernatural)
- participating in rehearsals and crew meetings (inlc. analysing the text, developing characters, building meaningful relationships, clarifying speech, designing stage concepts,
- obtaining costumes and props, stage managing a production;
- connecting theory, context, and textual analysis with practical theatre experiences.
This course consists of in-person teaching (including lectures, classroom activities, small group discussions, viewing of performances, rehearsals, design meetings, and live performances) within weekly three-hour classes, plus additional rehearsals and performances, in the spring semester. Every student is expected to read the assigned Shakespeare plays, and secondary source readings, in advance of each week’s class.
As noted above, students will participate in either the cast or crew of a live Shakespeare production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The assignments consist of: one individual, practical contribution to a live stage production, one team presentation that explains this contribution, and one in-class written essay. In addition, class participation will be evaluated throughout the semester.
- Participation (individual) 10%
Throughout the semester, students will be marked on their timely attendance, level of preparation for class, involvement in learning activities, contributions to discussions in class, plus creative and consistent professionalism in rehearsals/meetings for our production of Macbeth.
- In-class handwritten response on A Midsummer Night’s Dream (individual) 20%
Students will write one in-class, handwritten essay, responding to Dr. Murray’s question on Macbeth. (This response is completed without notes or devices, but with a copy of the relevant scene from the play.) In this assignment, students will analyse the scene provided, in addition to applying perspectives from critical theory, as studied in class.
Word range: no minimum or maximum, but estimated at 1000 words.
- Creative Depiction & Written Analysis on A Midsummer Night’s Dream (small team) 15
Students will collaborate in small teams to create set designs (2-3 scenes) for
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as well as a written explanation of the specific lines, themes
and critical perspectives that inspired these designs. The written analysis should cite one secondary source that informs your designs. Both parts of the assignment will be submitted through Turnitin.
Written analysis word range: 600 words +/- 100 words
- In-class handwritten response on Macbeth (individual) 20%
On 16 Mar, students will write one in-class, handwritten essay, responding to Dr. Murray’s question on Macbeth. (This response is completed without notes or devices, but with a copy of the relevant scene from the play.) In this assignment, students will analyse the scene provided, in addition to applying perspectives from critical theory, as studied in class.
Word range: no minimum or maximum, but estimated at 1000 words.
- Contribution to Stage Production of Macbeth (individual) 35%
This learning engagement empowers students to stage a condensed, contemporary, live production of Macbeth on the HKU campus. Involvement in the production of Macbeth involves each student acting in, designing part of, or stage managing throughout, this production.
Total: 100%
In this course, we work with the Folger editions of Shakespeare’s works as our primary sources, as these editions are available online for free at: https://www.folger.edu. If desired, you may purchase the Folger notated edition of each play or a hard copy of the plays. The required secondary sources (i.e. academic research articles and book chapter excerpts) will be provided for free via Moodle, but you will undertake additional individual research.
Primary sources:
- Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream from The Folger Shakespeare. Ed Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine. Washington DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 2009. https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/a-midsummer-nights-dream/read/
- Shakespeare, William. Macbeth from The Folger Shakespeare. Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine, editors. Washington DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 2004. https://shakespeare.folger.edu/shakespeares-works/hamlet/
- https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/shakespeares-sonnets/read/
Secondary sources (partial list, additional readings TBC):
- Marshall, Cynthia. The Shattering of the Self: Violence, Subjectivity and Early Modern Texts. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
- Warley, Christopher. Reading Class through Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
- Loomba, Ania. Shakespeare, Race and Colonialism. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.