Project: Shakespeare Reimagined

Shakespeare’s success continues to this day. His plays are read and performed around the world in their original words, and often with the same stage settings and costumes first imagined nearly four hundred years ago. Yet there are many who have never watched Shakespeare simply because they find his work hard to understand and his ideas a little outdated. Having read Midsummer Night’s Dream and having seen it performed, you may have thought that Shakespeare’s work is in need of an update. Well, as Shakespeare would say: oh, happy day, because you get to reimagine his work as something new.

Instructions:

• Select an action packed or entertaining scene from the play (like the final fight between the couples or Titania falling in love with Nick Bottom) and select a team of classmates to help fill the roles in the scene. Each student participating must have a role to play.
• Write a project proposal (which may be accepted or dismissed by Mr. Jasper based on its merits and preparation) reimagining the scene with a new setting. List props/costuming that will be needed by the actors and the backdrop/stage design which will bring the actors to this new time and place.
• Rewrite the text of the scene to fit both the new setting (paleolithic era, a distant future in space, or even modern day street corner) and for understandability. Your goal is to make sure that any listener from our modern day can understand what the characters are saying.
• Annotate your new text to instruct your actors how to deliver their lines:
  • What words should be stressed and unstressed and when should the actor show emotion- sobbing with sadness or shouting in anger?
  • Instruct actors what to do as they perform their lines. Do they approach Hermia, glaring fiercely or cower away, as if trying to slink off the stage.