Associate Professor Dr. Nicolae Mandea; Professor Leon Rubin (East 15 Acting School, University of Essex, UK); Professor Dr. Dan Vasiliu; Associate Professor Dr. Bogdana Darie; Associate Professor Dr. Liviu Lucaci; Associate Professor Dr. Mircea Gheorghiu; Assistant Professor Dr. Dana Rotaru; Assistant Professor Dr. Marius Gîlea; Assistant Professor Dr. Mihaela Bețiu; PhD Student Romina Sehlanec DRAMA TEACHING through SHAKESPEARE Coordinated by Dr. Bogdana Darie, Associate Professor UNATC PRESS 2017 DRAMA TEACHING through SHAKESPEARE Book published within the UNATC JUNIOR Project Project implemented by the Master Degree in Theatre Pedagogy UNATC Financed by the Ministry of National Education through FSS 2017 Coordinators: Dr. Bogdana Darie, Associate Professor PhD Student Romina Sehlanec PhD Student Andreea Jicman MA Theatre Pedagogy Student Victor Bădoi CIP Description of the National Library of Romania Drama teaching - through Shakespeare. – Bucureşti : U.N.A.T.C. Press, 2017 ISBN 978-606-8757-16-2 792 UNATC PRESS 2017 Head of the Publishing House: Dr. Dan Vasiliu, Professor Printing House: Publicitaria CONTENTS Foreword.........................................................................................................5 Shakespeare in relation to pedagogy, Associate Professor Dr. Nicolae Mandea, translated by Romina Sehlanec and Andreea Jicman...............................................................................................7 Shakespeare today, Professor Leon Rubin (East 15 Acting School, University of Essex, UK), transcript Cornel Huțanu...............................................................................13 A Speech on How Shakespeare’s Pedagogy Can Be Perceived, Professor Dr. Dan Vasiliu, translated by Maria Alexe...................................35 Shakespeare and retaining the Method, Associate Professor Dr. Bogdana Darie, translated by Romina Sehlanec.....48 The Shakespeare Matrix, Associate Professor Dr. Liviu Lucaci, translated by Andreea Jicman..........73 Author’s subject and subject of the actor, Associate Professor Dr. Mircea Gheorghiu, translated by Ana Stehneiov….88 Shakespeare in Today’s Training of the Student-Actor, Assistant Professor Dr. Dana Rotaru, translated by Otilia Panainte...........113 Brief overview of Shakespeare’s fools, Assistant Professor Dr. Marius Gîlea, translated by Ana Maria Stehneiov and Romina Sehlanec..........................................................................................153 William Shakespeare – The rule of the genius, Assistant Professor Dr. Mihaela Bețiu, translated by Cornel Huțanu.........185 The Expressiveness of The Creative Body and Shakespeare, PhD Student Romina Sehlanec, translated by Maria Alexe........................199 Foreword This book is one of the outcomes of a comprehensive project entitled UNATC Junior, initiated and implemented by the UNATC’s MA Teaching Drama team, and funded by the Ministry of National Education of Romania. The project aims to promote the educational value of drama, and, as a natural consequence, to introduce it, as a subject, in the pre-academic curriculum. About the importance of culture in the educational process books have been written and numerous research programs have been conducted; however, in Romania this matter is still not entirely covered. While in other European countries children and their teachers use specific drama games and methods in the teaching-learning process, in our country this desideratum is met only sporadically, with many obstacles and difficulties. UNATC “I.L. Caragiale” Bucharest assumed responsibility to make this dream come true, and therefore to develop many related activities with direct applicability. Conceived on to layers: theoretical and practical, UNATC Junior aims to create future trainers in the field of drama, those who can become specialized teachers in working with people from different environment (various age groups, educational level or different social background). Taking advantage of the European historic moment, the celebration of 400 years of Shakespearean heritage, UNATC held, in May 2016, the International Conference “Shakespeare in Drama Pedagogy” as a desire to get in touch with the advanced research, applied directly in the training of the future drama teachers. 5 This book contains papers and materials presented in the conference days by the teachers and PhD Students involved in this project. Due to the language barriers, the research work of our teachers and students is less known on a European level. This is why the UNATC Junior management team wants to translate as many theatre papers in order to promote them amongst international institutes and theatre performers across the world. “Drama teaching through Shakespeare” can become a bridge between Romanian and European research in the field of TIE. Dr. Bogdana Darie, Associate Professor UNATC Junior Project Coordinator 6 Dr. Nicolae Mandea, Associate Professor Shakespeare in relation to pedagogy In this year, you have all observed the conglomeration of Shakespeare events and this is actually a fact that deserves our attention. I brought with me a print of The Complete Works of Shakespeare and I will explain why. It looks like a scale model of a monument or like a treasure box, what actually it is in fact. We commemorate 400 years since the death of Shakespeare to outline what is already obvious, the fact that Shakespeare is an author of interest to the contemporary world. However, the question that arises is more important, what would be the interest in an author from over 400 years ago? What exactly is the purpose and how can it be brought up? Because otherwise it is flat. What is his place within the European and the universal culture? Writers who are not brought into question, in my opinion, have a problem with posterity. The present feeds from the fact that they can always be brought into question and not denied in a barbaric manner but simply discussed again. The way in which history perceived Shakespeare in these 400 years is exemplary. There are countless Shakespeare-like personalities that nobody, in the Elizabethan times, had the power to predict them or even have hunch about their potential. Why? Because there is a very big difference between the author from that era and the author - as a cultural product developed by the work of several generations. The actual Shakespeare is the product of a cultural 7 effort, especially done by the European culture. Still, let’s not forget that in this process, somehow, the Japanese culture also took part. In order to build the cultural concept called Shakespeare, the European culture has been working for 400 years. We must be very aware of the fact that Shakespeare is the product of those 400 years and not that these 400 years are the product of Shakespeare. Perhaps I was too radical in my statement, but this is the direction I try to embrace, Shakespeare the author, the one who wrote, hardly to say that he has signed, there are quite a lot of controversy on this subject, but the one who has significantly contributed to the production of these texts that we call Shakespeare’s plays, but which are actually tokens of the creative process from the Globe Theatre, the place where Shakespeare was involved along with the whole team. We only discover Shakespeare literally, as a literature writer in his sonnets. Shakespeare’s plays are the result of a creative process at the Globe Theatre, where he accepted with all serenity and without any idea of cultural bias the fact that the observations that are being made in today’s rehearsal lead to the script revival for tomorrow’s rehearsal. Moreover, he did not always need these guidelines or requirements because he himself participated at the rehearsal process, observing what was happening, understanding and having the artistic compass of a creator to correct in one way or another, to rewrite, to redesign parts of the script. For sure, it is now known that it’s difficult or actually impossible to restore this kind of creative process. It is also a certainty that every time the text that Shakespeare used for the first rehearsal was extremely different from the one performed finally at the Globe Theatre, the one which was kept. Of course, the stylistic imprint, the final elaboration belongs to one man and this is Shakespeare himself. What we have to understand with great finesse and with all the necessary relativism is this idea, that the author - 8 Shakespeare, the one we are talking about today is the product of two creative processes: the first one defined timewise, within the Globe Theatre’s team, and the second one expanded during the 400 years of cultural evolution of Europe. Many of the theories regarding the text interpretation - the very notion of text is one that has been developing in these 400 years - are successive revolutions. From this point of view the subject is extremely complex, but we have not finalized the problem concerning the connection between the theatrical creation and the text and the relationship between Shakespeare – the real author and Shakespeare – as a cultural composition. We gathered here for something else, the topic that made me very glad when it was proposed by the organizers of this event: Shakespeare in relation to pedagogy. When we intend to turn the topic of Shakespeare in a development area for the theatre artist - the actor primarily, but not only, this being very important for the director and the stage designer also - at that time we step on a territory that