The Troubadour Podcast
"It is the honourable characteristic of Poetry that its materials are to be found in every subject which can interest the human mind." William Wordsworth The Troubadour Podcast invites you into a world where art is conversation and conversation is art. The conversations on this show will be with some living people and some dead writers of our past. I aim to make both equally entertaining and educational.In 1798 William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads, which Wordsworth called an experiment to discover how far the language of everyday conversation is adapted to the purpose of poetic pleasure. With this publication, he set in motion the formal movement called "Romanticism." 220 years later the experiment is continued on this podcast. This podcast seeks to reach those of us who wish to improve our inner world, increase our stores of happiness, and yet not succumb to the mystical or the subjective.Here, in this place of the imagination, you will find many conversation with those humans creating things that interest the human mind.
The Troubadour Podcast
Bringing Shakespeare to Life in the Classroom: Transforming K-12 Education with Austin Shakespeare
Ever wonder how Shakespeare's intricate language and timeless stories can transform K-12 education? Join us in an enlightening conversation with Kirk and Anne Ciccolella from Austin Shakespeare as we uncover the secrets to making classic literature accessible and exciting for young students. Learn how Shakespeare's complex narratives can significantly enhance students' language skills and overall literacy, even captivating fifth graders through performances and interactive activities. We also discuss the hurdles educators face, like limited time and inadequate training, and how Austin Shakespeare’s programs are pioneering solutions by bringing professional actors directly into the classroom.
Discover the magic of live theater as a tool for deepening literary appreciation and critical thinking. We delve into the educational value of experiencing Shakespeare and other classics like "Jane Eyre" through live performances, and how moving from mind to body in understanding literature can make a world of difference. Explore the multifaceted approaches of interactive theater experiences, including informances, and the benefits of reading poetry aloud and using multimedia resources to bring the beauty of literature to life for students.
Finally, get an inside look at the practical aspects of integrating Shakespeare into the classroom. From the logistics of having actors visit schools to the excitement of assembly programs like the World's Fastest Hamlet, we cover it all. Hear about the passion that drives these initiatives and the vital role of donations in making them possible. Plus, learn how you can support Austin Shakespeare and embrace the transformative power of classical language in contemporary education. Don't miss this inspiring episode that bridges the gap between timeless literature and modern learning!
Shakespeare is, above all writers, the poet of nature. The poet that holds up to his was a country boy from Stratford-on-Avon, so he really gets the beauty of the swans and the water and the green, and you know that expression, the green world is often what Shakespeare plays open onto. So they'll start in the city, even midsummer, and then they go to the woods and Shakespeare has a real sense of the fantastical nature of the woods.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Troubadour Show. My name is Kirk and I have Anne Ciccolella from Austin Shakespeare to talk about Shakespeare in education and in classrooms, particularly K through 12. And, anne, I wanted to start with something from you really quickly, about what is the value of this, why did you start this program, why it's important.
Speaker 2:Cool. Well, I wanted to connect to Troubadour because I think so much of what you're doing, Kirk, is trying to bring the beauty of language to people who might not have it all that much. You know, and that's what we're doing. So you know, schools have really changed to do contemporary novels, to read simpler poems, and what we want to do is show them that Shakespeare is absolutely something reachable. So, just like you're doing it with Troubadour, getting Tennyson and Blake and all those folks into the world we're trying to do that. Live in the classroom and it's been pretty successful.
Speaker 1:So the first question I would have in that regard is why, like we could just say, forget it, just stick with this contemporary. If you like the classics, go for it. But I claim, and I think you agree, that there's an essential aspect to at least some training of young minds that has this elevated language, this carefulness with language that may not be as prevalent, I think, in modern language sometimes. And so you know what's the use of going back 500 years and reading something that's complicated. It is difficult, it's difficult for me to read Shakespeare, I won't lie. So what's the?
Speaker 2:value of that. Well, we've done stuff with as young as fifth graders, yeah, and it shocks me how much they love it.
Speaker 1:I taught Julius Caesar to fifth graders when I was a fifth grade teacher. They loved it, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think that the difficulty of it can actually make modern reading easier. Oh yes, so it's a little bit like if you listen to some classical music. When you listen to contemporary music it's like, oh well, this is so easy, it's just a beat. I now know what melody is like, I know what harmony is like, so we've had good experiences. It's just hard to find the time in the classrooms, so the classrooms are now so over-administrated. So we do much better with independent schools who have a little more flexibility.
Speaker 1:But we do want to get into the public schools because we know the need is there there's not enough time in these classrooms, and part of what you're trying to provide is a quick, easier way for whether it's public or independent to you know, go out and do it so that the teacher doesn't have to necessarily do everything him or herself, which is part of the difficulty of being a teacher, and so you know that's. I think it seems like that's one of the.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll even go back to teacher education. That is because teachers are not taught all that much about Shakespeare when they go into the classroom. There's some desire from parents and sometimes even administration for them to do Midsummer Night's Dream or Romeo and Juliet, and the teacher often gets frightened because they haven't had the training. So we can come in. We do train teachers, but sometimes just us coming in in the middle of their exploration of a script is helpful because it's so much more relatable for us. We're there, we're in the material all the time, so we get the kids up on their feet. We have a program called 20-20 where the kids are performing with professional actors for 20 minutes and they're watching professional actors perform monologues or scenes for 20 minutes and they're watching professional actors perform monologues or scenes for 20 minutes, and it really works like a charm, yeah, so that's what I did when I taught fifth graders is we did Julius Caesar and we would act out certain scenes.
Speaker 1:And of course we had to have just for fun, to get them engaged, we went outside and did a little battle sequence or something, even though I don't even think it's a big part of the script, but they loved it, of course. But anything to make them involved in the words, so that the words start meaning a little bit more to them and they start elevating their own thoughts. And I liked what you said about the contemporary reading becomes easier. That means contemporary life becomes easier, in a sense, if you train. More difficulty if you're a 35 years old business person or medical professional, whatever you are and you're reading we all read things all day long If it's easier for you to read, to get insights into what you're reading not just quicker speed reading, but real understanding of what's trying to be put across here.
Speaker 1:Where are the flaws, where's the you know problems with the thinking and things of that nature. So that kind of training of the mind is very powerful. I think of it as similar to you know, if you want to be comfortable living in the world with your body. You want to be able to go up the stairs with your you know grandkid or your child on your back right. That's a, but to do that you need to train a little bit. You need to do more than that in order to do that more simple activity, or even just walking with groceries. These are some basic things. When you get older become a lot more difficult, and some of the training will help you with that. It's the same thing here is you want to be above so that when you're in the normal everyday life, where you're not really in that, it's just a lot easier.
Speaker 2:Well, let me say even for our training with actors. So we have a young Shakespeare program where kids ages 13 to 19 perform Shakespeare plays. I don't like to encourage kids to become actors. That's, like you know, a very difficult profession and not an easy salary, but everybody has to create some kind of presentation. So, no matter what job you're in, at some point you're going to have to get up in front of people and present. Well, if you've done that in Shakespeare and if you've done that to hundreds of people, that becomes something you use in your tool belt. You know you can do. And I will say, having littler kids come and watch our Young Shakespeare program, yeah, they get inspired because they think. Well, you know, I'm only eight years old, but I understand what those people are doing and they're teenagers, so it's really contagious.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:This idea of presenting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know. The thing that comes to mind I never thought of is the montessori principle of the older student, the older child teaching the younger child as part of the process, in a sense, and even though they're not exactly teaching but it's a doing.
Speaker 2:I mean montessori.
Speaker 1:It is about the doing and but but you just, you know the, the older students get something because they are explaining things to some of these kids, sometimes right, like in the curtain theater program. I've seen that and then the younger kids get to see it's not just you know old man like me up on stage yelling or something, it's kids like that that are not that much different from them and kids they admire. So there's like a good symbiotic process.
Speaker 2:Well, let's talk about, though, a little. In Austin, we have this fabulous resource, the Curtin Theater. So there are only 11 theaters in the United States that are replicas of an Elizabethan theater, and we happen to have one Now. It is on private property, so lots of people don't know about it, but we use it once a year, mostly for young Shakespeare. But you've gotten to perform on the Curtin stage. Can you tell us what that was like?
Speaker 1:Oh well, I think it's well one. I could just say it was my first performance professionally and the value of someone who I've read a lot of literature in my life but and I've even tried in my own head to direct an act you know, out of play, to kind of get more out of it. But nothing replaces the contemplation of doing it in a cast and in front of an audience, even if the audience is peers at school or something like. There's just something really powerful about ingesting the words with that kind of intensity right, you got to get them across.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you have to think about, okay, what is he really trying to get across here? Shakespeare, that is the author, what's the point of this? Which gives you a whole nother analysis and understanding and integration in your own life and soul and character. And you know what is going like. What is the? I played the Prince and Romeo and Juliet. What is the prince trying to do? Is he just a bad leader, you know? Is there like a father figure in this moment? He's trying to get things done. He's being too harsh, like and those are things that you think about. You know, now kids can think about it on a different level with what's working with them.
Speaker 2:But that process was a shifting of my consciousness, of in the nowness of theater, right, and it's now for you, the actor on stage, and it's now for the audience watching, and we're in the same now. So I mean you know it's wonderful to read and you're in your imagination and you go to that place. You know we'll do Jane Eyre this year, so I think of reading a novel, but that's different than being in the novel. So you're with Jane Eyre, you're feeling for her what she's going through. You feel that she wants to rebel. And what I'm excited about about this production we're going to do this year, is it's not an ambi-pambi, jane Eyre.
Speaker 2:You know some of the old movies she's kind of quiet. This Jane Eyre is really feisty. She really fights for herself, even though physically she's a small person. It's a more modern version of Jane Eyre than, I think, the 30s movies used to be.
Speaker 1:There's this issue of you have different interpretations of these work, and one of the values from an education standpoint is to help students understand that there are these different interpretations and that they have some control over the interpretations and evaluating them in the future by being immersed in the story itself. So if you're doing something with Shakespeare one, you'll appreciate Shakespeare professionally later, even if you don't become an actor which 99.9% of these students are not going to become actors but they're going to be able to enjoy classic theater, they're going to enjoy different productions and they'll be able to even see oh, I like that, they did this, I didn't like that, which I think is a really important. That kind of evaluative approach method is just a helpful way of living in the world in terms not just in Shakespeare, but just having that kind of thoughtfulness about all of your activities, and I think Shakespeare is a good training for that.
Speaker 2:Well, let me say for all our shows. So we now have revealed we do more than Shakespeare, but we are very much on the benefit of language and what we call theater of ideas. So we have a thing called informances. So for the afternoon kids will come into the Rollins Theater at the Long Center. They'll see scenes with full costume sets, actors and so on from the show that we're doing that evening. So in November it will be Jane Eyre and we are very excited to have them ask questions. We ask them lots of questions. They get to meet the actors and it's an interactive kind of thing, even though they're in the theater, learning how to behave in the theater and deciding, as you said. You know how do they feel about this. Does this make them want to be interested in reading Jane Eyre? Some of them may have read Jane Eyre.
Speaker 1:This is high school.
Speaker 2:So this is high school and some middle school.
Speaker 1:Oh, middle school with Jane Eyre, yeah, oh nice, okay, it's a big book too, yeah. So another thing that's good. So you know, we obviously have English classes still, or literature, or, you know, language arts there's a variety of different names different schools use but essentially there's still the practice on some level of reading books, and sometimes they'll throw in a play or a movie or a poem, but rarely. I think that's mostly the reading of books.
Speaker 1:One of the values of theater is the moving from the mind to the body a little bit more.
Speaker 1:So you know, when we have kids today who are growing up and they're in their heads all the time, or in their computer, which is the same kind of thing, right Is you're more in your head and there's a deep value, life value, education, value of bringing the words to life.
Speaker 1:That I think is important in what theater, other than any other form of literature, art in general, can do. It's something very unique is that you have to bring the word alive and that I think is very important as a training, especially in a world where if we're doing reading, we're doing it in our heads. Maybe we'll talk analytically and logically about it or opinionated about our feelings about it, but we're not again bringing it alive. We could say what we think Jane Eyre feels like, what does Romeo feel like in this moment? We can analyze that, but we're not feeling it, which is what we want to do. We want to put it in our bodies and I think having a live theater component to school is a critical way of making that effective in the minds and yeah, and I think you know, if it's in your classroom, it's one kind of experience.
Speaker 2:If you go to the theater, it's another kind of experience. But all of them are pretty active. You know, when you're playing on your computer and doing video like video games, there's a lot of passivity there. I think, in terms of live theater and live work in the classroom, there's a lot of personal action.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of personal action, yes, and then there's also the issue of you have to think about what the character is doing, what you're going to do physically, what's your body doing in this moment when you know, again, just bringing up Romeo simply in this?
Speaker 2:And come up with lots of options.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what are different options Play around with that? Why is he? Why does he drop to his knees? Why does he jump around? Why does he drop to his knees? Why does he jump around? Why does he move this way? What is and you know, what do you? Why do you want to do that? What makes and that kind of is something you're not going to get anywhere else in any education. It's like, you know, there's, there's some that'll maybe do some element of you know, when I think about the best science teachers I've ever seen or heard, it's always let's okay, we're learning this theory, now let's go outside, or even ahead of before learning the theory, and let's blow something up right or like in a safe environment. Or let's do this, let's do that, and where you really are seeing it in the world and with literature, we don't do that a lot of times. And there's, by the way, my, you know, troubadour is all about reading primarily. So I'm all about that, but there's a really critical missing piece, if you're not bringing it out in that sense.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think even for our troubadour people who read poetry a lot of times, encouraging yourself to read it out loud, yeah. I think you have to, and some of it is about sometimes I find watching a YouTube video of a poem, especially a longer poem, helpful, yeah, and then, yeah, I can read it, but I like to have a professional read it. What's that like?
Speaker 1:And so yeah, I agree, and there's a lot of good ones out there. Same thing with theater, and again this goes back to. So there's a couple messages I'm seeing from the value of bringing Austin Shakespeare to classrooms and you know, one of them that I'm sticking on is we're seeing the classics die out in a sense where people are not reading the classics as much, they're not engaging with it. The, the theater, is, you know, shrinking a little bit in terms of classic theater, of the, the best of the last 500, a thousand years, and I think an assumption people can have is that the reason is well, it's just a new era and we're just not interested. But I think that's more likely that, because we're talking about works that have lasted for hundreds of years in different cultures all across, I think the more likely thing is that we're just not actually bringing it to kids in the right way, because you fall in love with stuff like this, I think, when you're young and it's not about having a full understanding, it's not about anything like that, it's just about having some positive experience when you're young with going to a performance, especially out of the classroom, right, like nothing wrong with the classroom.
Speaker 1:I was a teacher, but you know there's a lot of value getting out of the classroom, being in the curtain theater and like, oh, this is really cool, and immersing yourself, and then that will bring. You know, maybe the lot of many children are not going to fall in love with it right away, but 25 years later they will. Yeah, and I've seen this all the time with people who come to Troubadour. I bring them to Austin Shakespeare. Like, oh yeah, I kind of I them to also Shakespeare, like, oh yeah, I kind of I remember this was something fond in my memory when I was a young kid or something, and so there's a big value in just bringing positive experiences in different arts, even if the kid doesn't like snap into. Like I have to do this for the rest of my life sure, which is not the goal.
Speaker 2:I've seen so many kids get that sort of light bulb on where it's I can do this. Well, that too, you too, you know it's I can speak Shakespeare, and that glow. I mean that's why we do it. Yeah, you know they'll be impressed by watching an actor. Yeah, you know they'll see a Justin Scalise or Emily Green do it and be really impressed. And then later in the class they'll do some of it and it'll be like, oh, you know, I could do this.
Speaker 1:And and you know that was one of my questions here is actually what made you want to bring actors into classrooms in Central Texas, and it seems like that's part of it. Yes, Are there other reasons?
Speaker 2:Well, honestly, I think there's great need. There's not a lot of this going on. I mean, we have colleagues called the story wranglers. They come out of Paramount Theater and they have kids write story all year long and that's pretty great, but there's not a lot of this. I mean, there's not a lot of actors going into the classroom, especially actors who are doing classical work. So we really feel like we're serving a great need and, you know, by asking teachers to have us in, we're also creating a need Because they're like, oh, I guess we could do that.
Speaker 1:So when you go into a classroom with an actor, can you give me just a quick snapshot of what that looks like? Sure, Are they just going in there reading a couple lines and getting out of there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what's it look like? So we think of it, as mostly people have 40-minute thoughts, but the first thing I like them to do is tell them how they got into theater.
Speaker 2:Oh, ok, so have the actor, be a person to them and talk about their love of acting and love of Shakespeare and love of theater. Then having them do a full speech Okay, so you're really experiencing it for a couple of minutes. You know you're listening and you're there. Then we break up into small groups, so the actors and myself, so I always have two actors in me. So we'll break up into small groups, so the actors and myself. So I always have two actors in me. So we'll break up into small groups. Give everybody part of could be prologue of Romeo and Juliet, it could be a scene from Midsommar. Everybody gets their line. Sometimes kids prefer to speak it together, so sometimes a choral reading is less intimidating than I have to say my line at this moment.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I want to get a look at like. I'm a teacher, I'm busy. Let's say public school, whatever private school, but let's say public school, I'm busy, I have a curriculum. I do want to throw a little bit of theater. How long does it take for you to come, in terms of like time in classroom? How long does it take you? What do you do?
Speaker 2:I mean we'd love to be in your classroom three or four or five times a year. Okay, so one might be a sonnet, one might be what you're doing, one might be the shows we're doing. So we'll bring you in for informants. But many schools just have us in one 40 minute section a year and I'm like you know there's just so much you can do in that time. Yeah, but you take what you can get. It's not easy to get in classrooms and it's not easy to communicate with administrators and teachers and parents. You know like to have us and we do master classes and just getting us in is is a lot of the work, you know. It's almost like the dessert is being in that classroom for a class period.
Speaker 1:Okay so but the it's 40, about 40 minutes usually for each time. Ideally, you're saying the encouragement is like invite you over three, four, five times a year, or do three with you there, with the actors, an informants, a master class, something like that. So when a teacher and an administration is planning, they should probably be thinking how can we invite them three or four times a year?
Speaker 2:We do have an assembly program, so we have this thing called World's Fastest Hamlet, which is somewhat comedy and somewhat the real words of Hamlet, and we'll do that for an assembly program so that a whole middle school can get it or a whole high school can get it, and we're actually going to be doing it on September 7th for the community day at the Long Center. Oh, okay, so people can go sample it there.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's good. Okay, so that's a good go September 7th and go check that out and see it Okay. So what are the costs like to bring Austin Shakespeare into a classroom?
Speaker 2:They're very reasonable. We work with schools, so a few hundred dollars can really get us a lot of bang for our buck. $200 can really get us a lot of bang for our buck.
Speaker 1:And that's one thing as a nonprofit, when people donate to.
Speaker 2:Austin.
Speaker 1:Shakespeare. They're helping to offset and support and make those happen and bigger donations can maybe drive the cost down for classrooms. Right or get us into more places and get more places, which is what we want to do. More of this and more marketing, more classroom, more actors able to do this, because you do have to pay the actors, of course, they're professionals and yeah, okay. So any last thoughts before I do a couple of questions or quotes. Yeah, before I do a couple of quotes, that will do some rapid fire.
Speaker 2:Sure, let's do the quotes, and while I'm doing the quotes, I'll think about if there's anything I want to add at the end. Sure, let's do the quotes, and while I'm doing, the quotes.
Speaker 1:I'll think about if there's anything I want to add at the end. Okay, so this one I like from one of an author that I really love, richard Mitchell, is the he's the underground grammar, it's okay, the quote is the quotes. The important thing is the underground grammar, and he was a literary critic and professor in the 70s and he wrote a book called less than words can say.
Speaker 2:Oh titling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Our language is the greatest single treasure we have inherited from the past. When we fail to cherish and cultivate it, we cut ourselves off from the wisdom of our ancestors and the possibilities of our own minds. What do?
Speaker 2:you think? I think that's pretty wonderful.
Speaker 1:Any thoughts?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean in terms of what Shakespeare gives you. I'm not always that impressed, to be honest with you, with what Shakespeare has to say, but how he says it. So it might be wisdom that you've heard many, many times, but at that moment that you hear it that way, it lands in a special way you know to thine own self be true.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That somehow has much more power than even Aristotle, you know, saying you should be honest. You know, but he just puts it in an encapsulated way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which I think is what a lot of great authors and poets, that's the role, I think, and yeah, so that makes sense. So it's not just what he said, it's, yeah, the style and elevation which is something you can remember and something you can remember.
Speaker 1:There's a nice ring to it, for sure. Okay, let's go to samuel johnson, the famous critic from the 6th, 17th, 18th century. Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all modern 18th century writers the, the poet of nature, the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life.
Speaker 2:How lovely that puts me in mind of being at the Curtin Theater, when you're on Lake Austin and you're in the Pecan Grove and I often will say to our kids you know, this is what Shakespeare experienced. He was a country boy from Stratford-on-Avon, so he really gets the beauty of the swans and the water and the green and you know that expression, the green world is often what Shakespeare plays open onto. So they'll start in the city, even midsummer, and then they go to the woods and Shakespeare has a real sense of the fantastical nature of the woods. Oh, that's nice, yeah, and I remember we talked about that. And Shakespeare has a real sense of the fantastical nature of the woods.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's nice, yeah, and I remember we talked about that a little bit when we did Romeo and Juliet the day, the night, like how he's playing with that, and when you're out in the curtain theater. Although we didn't do it in the midday, we did it toward the end of the night, but it still had that element where it's like we started at the end of the day, basically early dusk, yes, and then we ended. You know, dark of night, yes, and you know, when I'm giving, as the prince, certain lines about that, you know the sun will not show its head, type thing. That is more powerful in the relationship to nature and our interior emotional experience of the things that happen to us, our interior emotional experience of the things that happen to us. It's not to say no, writers today do that, but there's something powerful because Shakespeare is living in that a little bit more than we are today with all of our fancy electronics and things like that. So that's that, thank you, I appreciate that.
Speaker 2:Any last thoughts? The last thoughts really are wrapping up from where we started meaning I think the work that Troubadour is doing, which is bringing to YouTube the idea that we can still have great classical language as part of our own lives, is very much what Austin Shakespeare is doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So we're doing it live in Austin, but the idea that we talk about it on YouTube is great, so thank you so much for making this happen.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks for bringing it to life with the prints for me and getting more and more involved with Austin Shakespeare and I think I hope you guys will get more involved with Austin Shakespeare and you know, sending in some donations and things like that to make more of these.
Speaker 2:Yeah, check out our website wwwaustinshakespeareorg. We think we have the best name.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, you think you have the best name, or you do have the best name. We have the best name. You have the best name. Yeah, all right. Well, thank you very much.