The Will Power to Youth (WPY) program goal is handwritten in colorful marker on a large piece of white craft paper. It is taped to the black wall of a rehearsal studio at the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles (SCLA):

Through dialogue, education, job training and art:
to promote self-respect,
develop mutual respect,
and build a community of artists dedicated to each other
and to the task of producing an original adaptation of a play by William Shakespeare.

The goal poster will hang there for the next seven weeks, serving as a reminder—especially when things get confusing, or frustrating, or exhausting, or boring—of why we have all chosen to step into this circle. This is our job. This is our commitment as members of the WPY community.

It is Day One of those seven weeks, a Monday morning in late June. A group of twenty-five Los Angeles–area youth ages fifteen to twenty-one stand in the circle with ten adult staff members who will serve as their collaborators, facilitators, and mentor artists in the work to come. The youth have come from a variety of neighborhoods and backgrounds. They are predominantly youth of color. Most are currently LA Unified high-school students or recent graduates. A few go to charter or private schools, and some may be starting college in a few weeks. Some have expressed a passion for theatre in their application and interview for this program. Others have never been in a play or seen a play by William Shakespeare. Some are here for the job. Many participants this summer will be receiving their first paycheck ever.

For three decades, the WPY program has been the flagship youth arts program of the SCLA. WPY is a youth development, employment, and arts program that hires young people to collaborate full-time with mentor professional theatre artists on the creation and performance of an original adaptation of a Shakespeare play. Activities and exercises engage the youth participants in conversation around key social-justice themes in the chosen play. Youth write about their own experiences related to those themes, and youth writing is incorporated into the adapted play script. Participants build literacy skills and interpersonal communication skills and become more workplace-ready through the process of collaborative artistic creation, while earning wages for their work. Through the exploration, personalization, and performance of Shakespeare’s text, a community based on trust and mutual respect is created.

Chris Anthony was program director of WPY for fourteen years. As associate artistic director for Youth and Education programs at SCLA, she designed and led professional development opportunities for teachers and in-school residencies for students. She also taught Shakespeare to student actors at a number of LA high schools including the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. Chris is currently an assistant professor of acting and co-head of the BFA acting program at DePaul University.

Peter Howard is a freelance teaching artist in Los Angeles. He has been a frequent WPY program staff member since the late 1990s, serving in a variety of roles, including co-program director, stage director, playwriting mentor, and facilitator. In the summer of 2023 he directed the WPY adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, titled Juliet and Romeo: What If?

What follows is a conversation between two colleagues in which Chris and Peter offer some lessons learned from their shared WPY experiences of building multicultural community through the exploration of Shakespeare. They discuss some of the foundational activities of WPY program design, some approaches to navigating the discomfort of hard conversations, and some of the ways in which Chris brings WPY practice into her high-school and university classrooms.

Peter Howard: We’re talking about building and sustaining an anti-racist classroom environment. And we’re talking about teaching Shakespeare. How do we do both? Where do we start?

Chris Anthony: The first big step for me in the classroom is to face my own discomfort with discussing difficult topics like racism. Especially because I am leading my classroom alone; I don’t have the full Will Power staff there with me. What sort of trouble might I be starting? For myself, for students of color, for white students . . . what am I about to unleash? As a Black woman, I have been comfortable talking about racism and elements of white supremacy culture in communities of color, but at a predominantly white institution, the conversation starts in a different place. And that can be scary.

Do you feel that discomfort as a white person working in communities of color?

PH: Frequently. Becoming more comfortable with that discomfort feels like a lifelong journey. I expect it to feel awkward at times. I expect that I won’t always know the perfect thing to say. And I believe there’s real value in us white folks showing up for hard conversations about race, in listening and learning and speaking from our hearts. As educators and artists, we can create spaces where respectful conversation across difference is part of the work. In Will Power to Youth, the reason we’re all standing in that circle is to build a multicultural, multiracial, intergenerational community and to create a piece of art together. That’s our purpose. Like everyone, I am other things besides my race and my age and my gender. When there’s a commitment to the wholeness of every person in that circle, the honesty can flow. Defensiveness can subside, at least temporarily. There’s an understanding that our community will be stronger because of that honesty all around.

CA: Do you think that’s what people mean when they talk about “brave space”?

PH: How do we encourage folks to choose to engage rather than avoid? We’re all called upon to be brave in different ways. I think we know when we see someone being brave, whether it’s a young person taking a deep breath and speaking a little bit of Shakespeare out loud for the first time, or it’s me acknowledging that I as a white person carry some unearned privileges and advantages in our society. In my experience, just stating that clearly can help build community. Seeing one another be brave in different ways can build community. Ideally a teacher is not just encouraging their students to be brave. They are also showing in their own way what it means to take a risk. We can inspire one another.

CA: That idea of working through things together might be an important tenet of an anti-racist classroom. Racism is a system of power that creates hierarchy based on race. That system is, in turn, supported by modes of thinking that are so deeply ingrained in our culture that they become unconscious.

PH: Do you connect that idea of systems to your work with Shakespeare?

CA: I think, as a Shakespeare teacher specifically, it’s part of my obligation to talk about systems. To talk about the cultural systems in place in Shakespeare’s world, the political systems in place, the role of the Church. All of these things that Shakespeare’s audience would have taken for granted are not necessarily things that we take for granted. We don’t take for granted, in our context, that the religion of the ruler is the religion of the people. We don’t think that having a different religion from the president could mean that you’re considered a traitor. It’s just not our context.

That’s an example of a system that I can help them think about. Then I can start to think about race. I can start to think about the ways structural racism and the language of antiblackness appear in the text. We define and break down stereotype, prejudice, discrimination, institutional oppression. We unpack those things so that when we encounter them in Shakespeare, we can start to interrogate the systems at work and how those systems are affecting the characters.

I find it really helpful to talk about systems, particularly when talking about whiteness, white supremacy, white supremacy culture. When I’m in a space with a lot of white students, I think it’s important for them to understand that I’m not talking about any one white person. I’m talking about whiteness as this other systemic concept.

And frankly, I’ve had to say that to Black students too. I was teaching online on January 6th, 2021, when the Capitol was stormed. My students are buzzing. I’m on Zoom. I’m teaching them on Zoom, and so I can see people’s focus start to change. And finally, somebody says, “Chris, there’s something on TV. Can we turn it on? Can we watch it?” And so we watched it, and one of the Black students said, “Oh, white people are crazy.” And I said, “Well, I don’t know about white people, but whiteness sure is.” And you know, it’s just a good reminder for all of us that it’s really important for us to be clear about what we mean. Always, always, always, but particularly when we’re talking about each other.

PH: So how can we begin to create a space where students can develop and practice the tools, cognitive and emotional, needed to dismantle racism? And once it is created, how do we maintain that community?

CA: Similar to many teachers who have their daily goal and their classroom guidelines on the board, Will Power uses lists of values and practices that guide the building and maintenance of our community. Each Will Power community works together to create its goals. They remain on the wall next to the program goal for the duration of our time together. The tricky part is to refer to them, unpack them, and evaluate how the community is doing in upholding them. And we make time to adjust as needed.

PH: Will Power to Youth is not a school-based program. In Will Power, we have the luxury of having our youth for five hours a day, five days a week. What parts of that intensive program are foundational for you and potentially transferable to the high-school or college classroom?

CA: Well, one thing that I always appreciated about Will Power was the sense of welcome: welcoming everyone into the circle as equally valuable collaborators. One of the things that classroom teachers would say to me after their students had done Will Power was “I can tell that they’ve been listened to. I can tell that they have been in a place where adults valued what they had to say.” And so I think that is a really important piece of the Will Power experience, and something I try to do in every classroom. I try to make it clear that I am actively listening.

PH: On Day One of every Will Power session, we create a ¿Quiénes somos? poster: Who are we? We have a long piece of butcher paper spread across one big wall, and all participants—youth and staff—answer a series of prompts like “Age,” “Last school attended,” “Favorite snack,” “Last movie you saw,” and “One thing that comes to mind when you hear the word Shakespeare.” How does an activity like that help begin the process of building community?

CA: I think that the key in this exercise is that it allows us to put everyone up on the wall together. It gives everyone a place. And it’s a document that we can refer back to. We can say, “OK, at lunch, find one person and ask them a question about something they put on the ¿Quiénes somos? poster.” And it’s highly customizable, right? You can tailor it to the Shakespeare text that you’re working on. You can tailor it to a particular idea or theme that you want to explore: love, violence, ambition. Having a place on the wall where everyone is participating together on Day One is a statement that we are all here together, and everybody counts. Everybody matters.

PH: And the diversity, perhaps even the hidden diversities in the room, are suddenly up there on the wall for us all to see. And visible.

CA: Right. We can begin to see potential intersections of identity.

PH: Then a week or so later, we do an activity called Aspects of Identity. We tape small signs all over the room: “Race.” “Ethnicity.” “Religion.” “Neighborhood.” “Gender expression.” “Sexuality.” “Family income.” “Politics.” “Education.” “Hobbies.” About twelve to fifteen signs total. We define each term, and then we ask a series of questions to jump-start conversation, asking folks to move to the sign that best represents their answer: I think about this part of my identity the most. My family has been a positive influence on this part of my identity. I have conflict with my family about this part of my identity. People judge me most about this part. I feel proud about this part. It’s an important moment for the community to see one another in our complexity.

CA: That is always a big day. People are invited to be honest and share something of themselves publicly. They are standing next to a sign. Standing in a personal truth. In fact, it can be hard to know why someone has chosen the sign that they chose, but it feels to the participant that they are communicating valuable information. They are seen. And they are not alone.

PH: We all are so much more than one thing. Being able to talk honestly about our multiple, intersecting identities is a step toward talking about our differences and how we can work together to build trust and understanding. Later in the process, we reflect back on this activity as we think about the complexities of our Shakespeare characters. What aspect of Romeo’s identity is a source of conflict in his family? What aspect of her identity does Juliet think about the most?

CA: I have had students come to me years later saying that they still think about that exercise, how their answers may have changed, and how they felt when other students heard them discuss their answers.

PH: What do we do in Will Power to practice listening?

CA: I think that the Will Power program design holds multiple intentional opportunities to practice listening. Early in Week One, we divide into pairs and the first partner tells a story about X. The listener knows from the beginning that they will have to repeat back what they hear. Then the storyteller can let the listener know if the retelling is accurate. This idea of Reflective Listening is peppered throughout the program in a variety of different exercises.

We also listen physically in the way we do statues and our tableau work. Often that is rooted in individuals creating a shape with their bodies based on a theme, plot point, or character from the play. Someone else will then mirror that image and take that shape onto their body, which is a different kind of listening. It’s a different kind of attention.

There are some people who have auditory issues, and it’s really hard for them to listen. Some people are visual learners; they see it, and then they get it. Will Power program design includes a lot of ways to acknowledge and to appreciate the differences that people are bringing into the room.

PH: And a lot of ways to participate in the artistic process. I’m thinking about what we call intro workshops. We have opportunities for each participant to sample areas led by professional artists: acting, writing, sound design, movement, costume design, scenic design. The student who might not be initially interested in standing up on the stage and speaking a lot of a Shakespeare text might be very compelled by music, fashion, or architecture. There are multiple ways to contribute to the final production. There’s a way in which the participants feel like the program is listening to them. And when they say “listen” I don’t think they mean it in the sense of “You heard me.” They mean, “You saw me. You saw me make a choice; then you respected and supported my choice.”

CA: I think that is a key element of the anti-racist community. To be able to truly see and hear others and to be seen and be heard for who you are, and not be expected to conform to somebody’s idea of you.

One of the most powerful moments I ever had in Will Power was very early on. In 1996 we did Othello and there were these boys, these teenage boys, and they’re all sort of big. I’m little. I’m five-three. But they were all like a foot taller than me and I felt the need to really be “in charge” in one moment, and I snapped at one of the young men in the program. And then the next day I realized what I had done, and I said to him, “I’m really sorry. You didn’t deserve that.” And I said it in front of everybody. And I saw something change in his eyes. I saw him be seen in a way that I hadn’t realized. I can only imagine that there are probably lots of people in his life who talk to him that way or treat him that way, but maybe not so many who apologize for it. And so that was a really important lesson for me, that I have to respect everybody in the room, and when I do, I don’t have to be “in charge”; a community built on respect tends to keep itself on track. As a teacher, I can support their learning by recognizing my own humanity and my own failings.

PH: For many Will Power participants, this may be their first time exploring a Shakespeare play in depth. Maybe the second, after reading Romeo and Juliet in the ninth grade. How do we make sure that the consideration and learning about Shakespeare are connected to this community building, this creation of a space where people feel listened to and heard and respected? How do we make sure that the study of Shakespeare isn’t separate from the “community” stuff?

CA: Instead of asking how our community fits into the Shakespeare play, Will Power asks how the Shakespeare play fits in our lives. Where is the point of connection? How is this a play about a really important issue in the lives of young people?

PH: And always about community. That’s the one consistent theme, I would say, in every Will Power experience I’ve ever had, that guiding question: In what ways is this a play about community?

CA: And what do we mean by community? Community is more than just a group of people. It is the way we relate to each other, how we see ourselves and our place in the world. The common ideas and values that hold us together. For instance, an idea that holds us together here in the United States is the separation of church and state. An accepted idea in Shakespeare’s community was that the monarch chooses the religion of the people. The state chooses the church. In fact, the monarch was an embodiment of the state.

PH: I always loved that day in Week Two of Will Power when you would introduce the Great Chain of Being as a way of framing Shakespeare’s community, Shakespeare’s world. How do you define that concept?

CA: It is a framework that places everything in creation on a hierarchy. The roots of the idea go back to Plato and Aristotle, with some Christian rearticulation in the Middle Ages. Everything is connected. God is at the top, below God are angels, and then below the angels is the monarch. That monarch is the person that God has chosen to be in charge of the people. And then everyone and everything else has a place in that hierarchy all the way down the line until you get to dirt.

There are other hierarchies associated with the Great Chain in other aspects of culture: Male is superior to female; age is superior to youth; intellect is superior to emotion. The oldest son inherits the family estate unless otherwise specified by the father. These ideas animate the plays and are often at the heart of conflict. Edmund asks the audience directly: Why am I less than my brother because he is legitimate? Don’t we have the same father? What difference should my age make? He might be born first, but I am better. And of course anyone who vies for the crown is upsetting God’s natural order.

PH: What surprises students when they’re considering the Great Chain of Being for the first time? What kinds of responses do you get, typically, when you introduce this material?

CA: Students are shocked that so much is determined at birth. There’s very little movement between rungs on the ladder. Primogeniture might be great for the oldest son, but what happens if you’re not the first son of a wealthy family? What are the options? Go to the military? The clergy? Study law? Marry someone with money? What happens if you’re a recognized son but not the legitimate heir? What if you are not wealthy at all? Is it possible to work your way into the middle class? And what about the exceptions to the rule? Elizabeth is a woman, the second of three legitimate children, and she is queen.

Understanding the Great Chain helps us interrogate the elements that are still with us. If I ask students if they have seen The Lion King, generally there is a resounding “Yes.” And I ask, “Why The Lion KING?” They usually say, “Well, the lion is the king of the jungle.” I can respond, “So you’re saying that this animal is the king, and then all the other animals fall into line. You’re using the Great Chain of Being.” Even though we know that lions don’t live in the jungle and they don’t have kings, the thought persists. (Plus we get to discuss the fun parallels between Hamlet and The Lion King.)

PH: What can an understanding of the Great Chain concept bring to students’ connection with a Shakespeare text?

CA: When we understand how the thinking from Shakespeare’s time is still with us, we begin to see that system of thought at work in his plays. The gap between our eras begins to close and we can see his characters as actual people like us but living with different social rules.

Is Malvolio, for instance, son number six of a noble household? He didn’t get to inherit, but he knows how noble households run, and so he becomes the steward of a noble household? Maybe that’s the best job available to him. Does that fuel his desire to marry Olivia? He’s mocked for wanting to marry above his station. But what if he really feels like his rightful station is her equal?

The Chain clarifies the rank and relationship between characters in Shakespeare. When Macbeth says, “You know your own degrees, sit down,” everyone would know where to sit at the banquet based on their rank. Rank determines what a character can or cannot wear. It might determine where they sleep. Orlando talks about sleeping with the hogs. That is not right. He’s the son of a nobleman.

Students get really engaged when they imagine themselves in these stories, bringing their own perspectives to the play.

PH: Let’s talk about how Shakespeare’s language can open up opportunities to talk about race and other kinds of difference. What plays other than Othello have you found useful in opening up those conversations?

CA: Well, we’re looking at A Midsummer Night’s Dream right now.

PH: And how is it going? What’s bubbling up?

CA: It’s really interesting, especially since I just listened to the audiobook of Farah Karim-Cooper’s The Great White Bard. She speaks very directly to this. I’m very grateful to all of the scholars who have been writing over the last forty years about this topic. Midsummer has so many references to fairness, whiteness, luminescent white equaling goodness. And the insults are referring to brownness: “Out tawny tartar!” “I will shake thee from me like an Ethiop.” The insults are about Blackness and the compliments are about whiteness. There’s this idea that beauty is inherently white, literally. And why? Because beauty is a reflection of inner goodness and inner goodness radiates as whiteness. And so, therefore, to be beautiful, one has to be white.

PH: How would these references to fairness and darkness have been heard by audiences in Shakespeare’s time versus students and audiences today? Is that part of the conversation that you engage in?

CA: My guess is that Shakespeare’s audiences took it in without question. Contemporary students often read without thinking. I think that it’s very easy to let these things go unnoticed, unremarked upon, unedited. You just read the lines and you just keep going, and I think that’s the danger with Shakespeare always, right? That you just say the line without really thinking about it too much, without personalizing it or making it meaningful to the modern day.

That’s one reason why I think it’s important to read the text aloud. For contemporary performers who are not white, it quickly goes from being theoretical to embodied. I recently had a young Black actress say, “Wait, you want me to read for Helena? They keep talking about how white she is, how fair she is, and I’m not. I’m not white. I’m not fair. So what is that about?”

PH: What did you say to that actress?

CA: I said, “Yeah, this is part of that Great Chain of Being thing.” This is part of that inner goodness idea. I unpack the idea that for Shakespeare’s audience, that’s what fairness is. That’s what beauty is. Beauty is fair. And then I, as the director, have to decide what to keep and what to cut. What makes sense to our audience? What unconscious messages do I refuse to pass on?

PH: Is this a reflection of what Shakespeare himself thought? Why would I as a twenty-first-century student be interested in a playwright who’s saying that darkness equals evil? Are we challenging that? Do we think Shakespeare is above that, or does he actually associate these qualities with these characteristics? Fair is good. Dark is bad.

CA: That’s an important question to ask. Maybe yes and no.

I’m not sure if we can know what Shakespeare believed. Shakespeare was kind of cagey about his beliefs if only because he endows so many of his characters with such palpable humanity. Even characters with marginalized identities exude the truth, beauty, and frailties that come with being human. Even Richard III is charming.

This feels close to the question “Was Shakespeare racist?” I’m not sure if our conception of racism is an exact fit. Race worked a little differently in early modern England. I think it was defined by nationality and religion, as well as skin color. I don’t know if Shakespeare believed that Black people were evil. Seeing any random Black person walking down the streets of London in his time, I don’t know that he believed, “I better cross the street because that person’s bad news.” I do think there were theatrical conventions of the time, shortcuts that came down from medieval mystery plays. The devil was black because that was good theater. It was clear messaging. Unfortunately, that message seeped into our culture and persists across time.

But I know what I feel when I read Sonnet 147: “My love is as a fever longing still . . . .” I love that sonnet. Love is a sickness the speaker is addicted to and they have given up their will to fight the fever. They have given up all good sense, and keep pursuing this love, even though they know it’s wrong. And then I get to the very last lines of the sonnet,

For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright

Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

And it hits me in the gut. Damn. There it is again! That hurts every time.

PH: Are there multicultural truths about Shakespeare’s world that can be a way in, especially for students of color?

CA: I think so. It is important to look at the world from other perspectives. There are so many amazing scholars looking at early modern England in the context of global trade and politics of that time.

I try to help students shift their frame of history and understand that they learned history one particular way. If you flip the map around and start looking at it from a different perspective, all of a sudden the fact that there are people from many different cultures  in England makes a lot of sense. Before I start teaching Shakespeare, I look at maps of the Earth in Shakespeare’s time, the Mercator projection that we commonly use, and the Peters projection that has more accurate proportions of the continents. Same planet, different stories.

I sometimes have students listen to “The Spin,” an episode of a podcast called Uncivil. It’s about the Daughters of the Confederacy creating the myth of the lost cause, rewriting and writing textbooks so that there’s this Gone with the Wind sort of sympathy with the rebels, with the South, with slave owners. And that’s reverberating for us now too.

In a similar way, Shakespeare was writing the story of England, right? Maybe the monarch’s family didn’t have the clearest, most peaceful ascension to the throne. Shakespeare creates heroes and villains that make those political feuds compelling. He showed the monarch’s family in its best light, even when it meant subverting the Great Chain, or historical accuracy. Problem solved. That exact thing has happened in our country too—that careful, selective narration of history.

PH: I’d love to hear you think aloud a little bit about America’s relationship to Shakespeare.

CA: One of the things that gets quoted a lot is Tocqueville’s observation that in early colonial America it was common for people to have a copy of the King James Bible and a copy of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. I think that understanding how those two texts in particular are so central to education in this country is really important. Students ask all the time: Why is Shakespeare considered so good? I don’t know. Would it have been different if there had been another text? If there was a really excellent English translation of Dante that made it into print, and all the English were reading that?

I think that Shakespeare’s position in the formation of our country has a lot to do with who we say we are and has a lot to do with what we consider “good.” I think because it was there, and because it is great writing, it became a critical piece of “things educated people know.” This is what cultured people know. This is what culture is, right? It’s not you in your lean-to on the Kansas frontier. It’s this, these words, these stories. People who are able to speak it well have a highly valuable skill, and that’s a clear sign of their intelligence. And that becomes a double-edged sword, right? Because those texts and their relationship to education also sort of got baked into the idea of being white. The idea that this is European, this is English, that this is white, and therefore the property of white people. And so there’s always a sorting in and a sorting out when people are talking about Shakespeare. Even now, people will throw out a Shakespeare quote, and if you laugh you get it; you’re in the “in” crowd, right? That’s a sign of your intelligence. The flip side of that is that if you are someone who would otherwise be sorted out, you can sort yourself in if you know those things. You can challenge it. I as a Black person can challenge someone’s expectations of me or challenge someone’s stereotype of me or challenge someone’s belief that I couldn’t possibly know Shakespeare well, by speaking it well.

PH: How do you help students discover the joy of making their own personal connections to Shakespeare’s language?

CA: In the last few years I’ve been thinking about this idea of personal poetry. The idea that it’s not just what you say; it’s the way that you say it that makes those words come alive. We use text today in the same ways that Shakespeare was using text.

I come from a storytelling culture. My people are from the American South. Storytelling is a cultural value—storytelling for effect, storytelling for amusement, for entertainment. This is a highly valued skill in my culture. I like to have students answer the question: “What’s something you grew up hearing all your life? What are the things that your people say over and over again?” We can then start to make connections to Shakespeare’s text.

PH: How would you answer that question?

CA: “If it was a snake, it woulda bit ya.” Not only can I hear the way my mother said it, I say it exactly the same way. And so as readers and performers we can pull a phrase and say it as if it were something a character always says. Or has always heard. A phrase like “Marry and amen” should have the feeling of that personal poetry.

Or my favorite is something that one of my aunts said to my mom about seeing somebody that they hadn’t seen in years. She says, “Oh, Lord! He looks like forty miles of bad road!” Now I know exactly what he looked like, you know? That figurative language is high poetry. And, frankly, hilarious to me.

PH: How do you connect that delight to Shakespeare?

CA: Just today I was working on Midsummer. “Never did mockers waste more idle breath.” That could be something that Helena has heard before. Like we might use, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” She uses those words like a shield against playground bullies. We heighten language all the time. And I think that part of finding ourselves in the language of a Shakespeare play is finding the place where our heightened-ness and Shakespeare’s heightened-ness meet.

Or look at Romeo’s “She doth teach the torches to burn bright.” The opponents of paraphrasing would say, “Kids today will just say, ‘She’s hot.’” But I was talking to a colleague at San Francisco Shakes, and she said in one of their workshops, a student paraphrased it as, “She’s so hot she teaches fire to burn.” Now that is heightened! That’s what Romeo is saying. That’s what that text means. And that paraphrase invites the speaker to put a little English on the ball and give it some personal flair.

I think there’s just so much fun in the way we naturally use language. Everybody’s cultural context has its own particular qualities, its own imagery, and its own idioms. Being able to identify those things in our own language and also find them in Shakespeare helps everybody feel like they belong in that text.

PH: There’s such joy in that for me as a teaching artist in Will Power. When a young person sees themselves in a moment from a Shakespeare play—even a tiny one, “Come, sir, away!”—and brings some part of themselves to the playing. I understand both the language and the actor—the person—in new ways.

CA: One day our class was reading about Viola changing her name to Cesario, and a trans student exclaimed, “I did that! I changed my name too!” Suddenly, everyone in the room had a new understanding of Viola and of that student’s journey.

And maybe a new relationship to Shakespeare.

References

Hitt, Jack and Kumanyika, Chenjerai.  Hosts. 2017. “The Spin.” November 8, 2017. In Uncivil. Podcast. https://gimletmedia.com/shows/uncivil/n8hv4k/the-spin.

Karim-Cooper, Farah. 2023. The Great White Bard: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race. London: Viking.

Tocqueville, Alexis de. 2001. Democracy in America and Other Writings. Translated by Gerald Bevan. New York: Penguin Books, at 544.

Appendix

As an addendum to their conversation, rooted in some of the topics discussed, Chris and Peter offer the following thoughts and encouragements for educators. Let’s share strategies for building community in the classroom and supporting students as they forge new connections with Shakespeare’s text and one another!

GENERAL THOUGHTS

We encourage you to:

Design with your own curiosity, capacities, and success in mind. Skills and confidence will grow over time—for you and your students. It’s OK to start slowly. That might mean choosing to explore three scenes from a play instead of directing an entire production. Or choosing one classroom guideline that you’re going to practice, one skill or one value to reinforce, one aspect of identity to investigate. Start strong and grow from there.

We encourage you to:

Let your passions guide the way into the text. If you love music, how can you explore the sounds in a Shakespeare play? In a Shakespeare production? A character playlist, movie-trailer music, sound cues for the transitions between scenes, or underscoring could all be ways to let your passion for music connect students to the text.

CLASSROOM CONVERSATIONS

We encourage you to:

Allow everyone to speak in drafts. Some people process their thoughts through writing; others through talking. Speaking in drafts allows everyone to revise their statements after hearing them aloud.

Some helpful language might be “This is an early draft of my thought, so let me see where this goes . . . ” or “Looking back, that was an early draft. I realize now that I didn’t really mean ( . . . ). I would edit it like this . . . .”

We encourage you to:

Choose a communication skill to reinforce. For instance, if Active Listening is one of your community agreements, reflective listening might be a skill to help your community become better listeners.

Some helpful language might be “I heard you say ( . . . ). Is that right?” Then listen for a confirmation. Or challenge students to incorporate the last thing someone said into their next comment.

IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE

We encourage you to:

Create opportunities for students to learn new things about one another. We all possess multiple, intersecting identities—some of which may be invisible. The more we know about one another, the easier it is to see beyond stereotypes.

How might a ¿Quiénes somos? poster or a mutual interview activity be an opportunity for your community to see each other in new ways?

We encourage you to:

Follow your students’ interests. Perhaps race and racism are compelling topics in your school community. Or perhaps there are other aspects of identity and difference that feel more urgent to your group: gender roles, body image, social class, neighborhood, etc.

Where does your group see the opportunity and need to build community and bridge difference?

We encourage you to:

Find connections between your community and Shakespeare. Where do you see the issues and divisions in your community play out in the text you’re exploring? Imagine Shakespeare’s characters as having lives and identities as full and as complicated as ours. How would a chosen Shakespeare character respond to the questions and activities you’re exploring in class?

NAVIGATING DISCOMFORT

We encourage you to:

Remember why the difficult conversation is important to you and your students. Does it help illuminate the text? Expand students’ ability to think critically? Help build a more kind and inclusive school culture and community? Reconnecting with intentions can help maintain focus. Wherever possible, use the Shakespeare text as your “home base” to illustrate or offer perspective on the themes and ideas that are coming up in your classroom conversations.

We encourage you to:

Offer multiple ways for students to share. Some students might be comfortable talking about challenging topics in a full group setting. Others might be more comfortable sharing in small groups, in one-on-ones, or in journals. Everyone has something to contribute, but we don’t all contribute the same way. With time, quieter participants may feel more brave about sharing their perspectives, inspired by the honesty and respectful listening shown by others in their classroom community.

We encourage you to:

Return to your communication guidelines. Bumps and misunderstandings can happen, especially when discussing topics that are personal and important to us. Challenging moments and conflict can be opportunities to revisit and even revise some of the ways we want to communicate with one another.

How can a challenging moment be a chance to practice Active Listening? How might a moment of conflict between individuals be the foundation for greater trust and understanding within the whole community?

We encourage you to:

Separate the personal from the systemic wherever possible. Systems of power create hierarchies based on race, gender, family income, immigration status, and many other aspects of identity—in Shakespeare’s plays and in our own world. In an anti-racist, anti-bias classroom, we can try to create awareness of how these systems affect our attitudes and beliefs, often unconsciously. How might a conflict that feels personal be an example of a problematic system or social structure?

EXPLORING THE TEXT

We encourage you to:

Remember that young people already have “Shakespearean” experiences. Hopefully they have not seen a ghost who charged them to kill their uncle, but they might know what it means to have difficulty with a parent or a step-parent.

Finding the essence of relationships is helpful. How do best friends, parents and children, jealous lovers, or wary opponents talk to each other today? How do people behave in private vs. in public? What do they want other people to think about them? What do they want the other person to feel?

We encourage you to:

Celebrate personal poetry. “Heightened” language is all around us. We use metaphors, idioms, and similes in ways similar to Shakespeare’s characters. Sometimes it’s not what you say; it’s the way that you say it.

How many times has Romeo heard, “Wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast”? How many times has the Friar said it? Does Phoebe in As You Like It say, “Foul is most foul being foul to be a scoffer,” like we might say, “Nobody likes a sore loser”? Even if the paraphrase is not exact, but the phrasing might give you a sense of the life inside the words.

PRODUCTION

We encourage you to:

Connect with other resources in your school community. There may be a visual art or music teacher who is eager to showcase their students’ work in your Shakespeare production.

Is there a way to creatively expand the production to include other groups? Would you consider casting the drill team as an army or expand the three witches to include a chorus of movement-based phantasms? Set “Double, double, toil and trouble” to music? Or have the school’s stand-out singer solo at Capulet’s party?

We encourage you to:

Explore the many ways that students connect to their creativity. If some folks are not eager to perform, what other ways can they contribute? A very organized student may make a great stage manager. Students don’t necessarily need professional-level skills to create costume design.