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Writers In Electronic Residence (WiER) and ShakespeareWorks, formerly On Board With The Bard, are pleased to announce their collaboration on a new, national online learning project for Canadian schools. Shakespeare In Electronic Residence (SIER) will link professional Canadian actors with students and teachers using computers and electronic conferencing.

With the assistance of some of this country's most talented Shakespearean actors, SIER will provide a uniquely enriched learning environment for the study of Shakespeare. Following the successful online model of WiER, in which professional writers harness Internet technology to read and critique original student writing and commentary, SIER will be a national online learning program bringing the input and perspectives of professional actors to literature and drama classes across Canada.

Pilot Project, November, 2002

The pilot of the SIER project took place in November, 2002, with five secondary classes across Canada participating. The pilot project ran as follows:

Week 1: Introductions & Staging the Scene on paper

Weeks 2 & 3: Discussion of options for Staging the Scene

Weeks 4 & 5: Blocking the Scene & Reporting on What Worked & What Didn't Work

Students from each of the five classes were grouped together in ‘electronic literary salons’. Each salon considered and discussed scenes from one Act of Shakespeare's Macbeth, and students were mentored online by Peter James Haworth, an accomplished Canadian actor with many theatre, television and movie roles to his credit.

Highlights of the ‘electronic literary salon’ structure include:

• Students from across the country are grouped together, providing the multiplicity of voice that makes for rich and meaningful discussion.
• The input and perspective of a professional Canadian actor.
• The presence of an experienced WiER teacher/moderator to help facilitate and direct discussion.

Participation in SIER cost $300 per class, with a class being considered a group of thirty or fewer students. Introductory and connection materials were shipped to schools prior to the start date of the program.

 

Background of the Project

ShakespeareWorks, launched in 1998 by high school teacher Marvin Karon and actor RH Thomson, brings professional actors into high schools to demonstrate a scene from a Shakespearean play to English and Drama classes. ShakespeareWorks gets students excited by, and engaged in, the magic and genius of the works of William Shakespeare by demystifying the language for them with the assistance of professional Canadian actors. Last year forty secondary schools participated in this program with actors such as Colm Feore, Martha Henry, Paul Gross, Seanna McKenna, RH Thomson, Sonja Smits, Kenneth Welsh, Cynthia Dale, Scott Speedman, Maria Rocossa and more than a hundred and thirty of their talented colleagues. ShakespeareWorks is an Ontario-based program.

Writers In Electronic Residence (WiER), created by Trevor Owen in 1988, is an award-winning online learning program that links students across Canada in their writing or language arts programs with professional Canadian writers. Since WiER's inception more than 50 Canadian writers, including George Elliott Clarke, Lorna Crozier, Lawrence Hill, Ann Ireland, Welwyn Wilton Katz, Kevin Major, Daniel David Moses, Susan Musgrave, Robert J. Sawyer, Guillermo Verdecchia, and many others, have worked online as mentors for tens of thousands of students in hundreds of schools across the country.

In December 2001, an agreement was reached between ShakespeareWorks and WiER to develop and offer Shakespeare In Electronic Residence (SIER).

 

Why Shakespeare?

As the late professor Allan Bloom put it:

All over the world the titles of Shakespeare's plays have a meaning that speaks to common consciousness. Hamlet, Lear, Othello all call forth images in the minds of all classes of men across national boundaries.

And many feel that Shakespeare's genius for holding up a "mirror to nature" and reflecting to us all what it means to be human stands alone.

Although Shakespeare's works are taught in classrooms across Canada, many educators face challenges as they try to arouse students' interest in and enthusiasm for the plays. Educators, who commonly report that their students find Shakespeare's language unintelligible, or that they find the study of Shakespeare irrelevant in this age of instant communication and sophisticated technology, seek ways to "bring the plays to life," or to "lift the words from the page."

SIER seeks to transform the classroom experience of Shakespeare, using communications technology to link students and actors in critical discussions of interpretation and staging, drawing on the actor’s perspective. In this way, the presence of the actor — who joins you online for the duration of the project — becomes part of the classroom study of Shakespeare, where teachers can incorporate the actor's insights, ideas and perspective into their teaching.

 

What We Expect Students Will Gain

• A sense of how a professional working actor/director approaches Shakespearean text.
• A new appreciation of Shakespeare based upon an understanding of what an actor must bring to his or her part (e.g., interpretation, motivation and reaction.)
• A new understanding and appreciation of the significance of Shakespeare's language and the emotion it conveys.
• A demonstration of the clear link between words, thoughts and actions as reflected in Shakespeare's characters and understood from the perspective of an actor.
• A transformation of the typical student view that Shakespeare's language is unintelligible to one of enjoyment, or even awe.
• An appreciation of why the works of William Shakespeare have been celebrated, studied and enjoyed for over 400 years.

 

How to Apply

Although the next SIER project has not yet been scheduled, we will be pleased to add interested schools to our mailing list. If you would like to be notified about future SIER projects, or if you would you like further information, please contact WiER.

It is our hope that you will join us for the next SIER project.