Rock on with Shakespeare
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Bowen Secondary School students presented their own version of the opening scene of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
“Shakespeare rocks!” - you might think it’d be hard to get a teenager today to agree with this, but six students in Bowen Secondary School would give a rousing cheer in response. Fresh from their well-received dramatised reading of the opening scene of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, these students have a newfound appreciation of the art of Shakespeare and the magic of drama.
“The scene explored a wide range of human emotions at different points, such as love, anger, sorrow, joy, justice and acceptance,” remember Sec 2 students Angelina Lim Shi Mei and Nur Aliah Bte Abdullah. “And the issues that Shakespeare brought up - such as the generation gap, rebelliousness of youth, lust for wealth and abuse of the innocent - are still occurring today.”
Deep thoughts for fourteen-year-olds, perhaps, but they also knew when to inject a little Singaporean flavour to win the hearts of their audience.
For instance, Sec 3 students Chan Yun Xin and Chan Qian Yi, who played young women Hermia and Helena respectively, adopted the pampered tones of a typical teenage Singaporean girl as they delivered their lines. As their teacher Mrs You Mee Choo recalls, while at first they tried to get the students to read the lines in strict iambic pentameter, “we later decided to allow the students to express themselves more freely.”
With the help of their teachers, these Drama Club students gradually got to the heart of the characters they were portraying.
All told, the six students from the Drama Club had only about two weeks to get ready for their debut at Shakespeare Rocks On!, an event organised by the National Library Board. While the Sec 3 students had been trained in basic drama skills as part of their lower secondary literature curriculum, the Sec 2 students were newer to the field, and all the students were not that familiar with Shakespeare.
Mrs You gave the students a run-through of the text and also enlisted the help of the school’s drama instructor, Ms Patricia Toh, to coach the students. Rehearsing for 3 to 4 hours a day throughout the school holidays, the students gradually developed a deeper understanding of the scene and experimented with different ways of creatively presenting it to the audience.
Angelina and Nur Aliah recall, “Mrs You and Ms Toh spent a lot of time training us in voice modulation, stage movements and expression. They patiently made us go through every line over and over again till we ‘felt’ like the characters.” Mrs You and Ms Toh also used different coaching techniques to help the students, such as showing them a video so that they could see how emotions could be depicted, or asking guiding or probing questions to make them more conscious of how they should speak and act.
Sec 1 students preparing for Drama Fest, a regular feature of the Bowen Secondary School calendar.
Mrs You adds, “We did not pressure them to memorise the text, as we thought fun and enjoyment should be the priority.” As a result, the students referred to their play scripts during the actual performance, but that did not stop them from delivering a heartfelt performance that earned them a prolonged standing ovation.
The Shakespeare Rocks On! event might be over, but there are plenty of other ways that students at Bowen Secondary School can explore their dramatic talents or understand literature better. Sec 1 students are gearing up for next term’s Drama Fest, while other students will be representing Bowen in debates on literature texts at Crescent Girls’ School’s Lit Fest in July.
For the six Drama Club students who worked on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, they have come away with a better understanding of Shakespeare, as well as of themselves. “The experience has made us more confident as performers and speakers. We have also forged new friendships with each other,” say Angelina and Nur Aliah. And what do they make of ye olde Elizabethan playwright? “Even now, Shakespeare rocks!