Abstract

This paper explores the way teachers, through collaborations with arts organisations (such as Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, London) can provide students with new ways to explore Shakespeare’s plays through performance.<p> In the past few decades, educators have been exploring drama and performance in the classroom as a way to enable students to bring a Shakespearean playtext to life and to interrogate the interpretive choices they, their peers and professional film and stage directors make in a range of different performances. </p><p> New ways of understanding and implementing dramatic and performative approaches in the English classroom can be created through interaction with arts educators and arts organisations. Rehearsal processes and actors’ perspectives offer new points of intersection with Shakespeare’s playtexts for students and teachers and can provide the space for personal, critical and contemporary social concerns to be included and interrogated.</p><p> The study of Shakespeare’s plays is developed in new and exciting ways through collaborations between the theatre and the classroom which foster the interchange of ideas and skills between actors, arts educators, teachers and students.</p>