‍If a teacher chooses to examine one of these 12 SOL plays with their students, practicing parts, or all of it, out loud, not only will the students acquire oral communication skills, but they are likely to create memories that might well last a lifetime. A wonderful, forty year-old nurse, Ashley, at my dentist, can still joyfully play all of Juliet in the famous balcony scene. This ability, which she has not lost from her teens, not only gratifies her, but encourages her to enjoy occasional Shakespearean productions. This cannot be accomplished with the usual literary, or piece-meal, approach of teachers - a bit of text, a translation, some farcical nonsense, a few obscure notes, perhaps a comic book or a bit of film or audio; it can only be achieved by understanding a whole story and how the characters actually relate to one another. Providing less than the whole story of a play, might actually seem a little insulting to students. I have not changed these stories, I have vacuumed and clarified them.

Think about it: for $10 Canadian dollars, your school can own a script that can be used by your whole student body, in perpetuity. The whole series and guides are currently on sale for ½ price. If you have some talent, you will now have the library to experience these plays orally, or staged. If your students have talent, they have a HUGE playground to investigate. This approach mainly needs judicious casting and regular oral investigation, which are the pathway to instilling a love of our greatest dramatist. What you supposedly know about Shakespeare, what you gleaned from some prof at university, is basically blah, blah, blah to students’ ears, certainly to mine; what they learn through actually playing Will, what I have learned teaching my 10,000 hours, or playing with truly great actors, has nourished my life greatly.

The rules and supposed rhythm of iambic pentameter verse are not rigorously followed by highly trained professional actors. As all good actors, they learn to think and invent their text as their characters would, as life demands, as I attempt in all my monologues and audio plays. Good actors would never let rhythm boss them about. Also, I have been in many world-class productions with the Canadian Stratford Festival. All the texts were vacuumed of archaic and repetitive language. These SOL scripts would work well in any theatre, but I created them for the classrooms of all ages. I call my formatting thought-verse for a reason.

SOL just needs courageous teachers!‍ ‍There is always some chaos once voices and emotions are unleashed. Relish them; they are the sound of learning!

The teaching of Shakespeare has been broken forever, certainly my 75 years. I have fixed it. What is the problem? The poor choices or technique of some movie star?? The big business of bores??? Try the voices of your students, instead! And, do the whole story; they are not stupid. They’ll tell you what they like, they might even memorize favourite chunks to perform. They make wonderful interludes between dental procedures.

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