English News

As Year 10 Monsters and Magic students, we have been exploring Shakespeare’s The Tempest through embodied acting. Stepping into a role changes how we read the play, as blocking, voice and niche character choices bring a whole new level of comprehensive depth of the play. 

We also used contemporary props in order to show the audience what characters we were, before we even spoke. The forced use of modern props made us focus on symbolism instead of literalism. An example of this was using a miniature Shakespeare toy when performing Prospero's final epilogue, as it was equally Shakespeare's address to the acting world as it was Prospero's to the audience.

Embodiment forces us to translate Shakespeare’s language into physical and tangible action. It both simplifies the play, and reveals many more niche tangents that were previously unnoticed. Doing this as a group also made us consider the relations between characters, using techniques such as levels to portray inferiority, superiority, and everything in between.

Doing all this turned an abstract text studied in class, a sort of 'tick the box' task by studying the greatest writer of all time, into actually realising why he was the greatest writer of all time. Shakespeare put more layers into The Tempest than the average onion, and physically acting this play made us dive in past the skin into the core of Shakespeare's hidden meanings and agendas.

By John Attia, A2