This spring I saw Shakespeare plays performed for kids and by kids. For me, both performances dispelled the notion that Shakespeare is too difficult for children. Two factors that contribute to this commonly-held notion is the antiquated language (Early Modern English) of the plays and the poetic style — blank verse — that the plays are written in. Many of us in North America particularly, are made to ’study’ Shakespeare in school often without the context of seeing a performance of the play. Although this exposure might make some students fans of the Bard, it more often can turn them off.

I was therefore delighted to see how much my daughter enjoyed her visit to the Globe Theatre in London to see Romeo and Juliet. And I was equally delighted by our family’s recent visit to a local home-schooling association’s production of The Tempest. Both these experiences of Shakespeare were enhanced by the reading of Lois Burdett’s books on Shakespeare’s plays. Burdett, a teacher in Stratford, Ontario — home of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival — adapted the plays for elementary age school children. The books are a result of a process of working through the plays in fun and creative ways with children. Before seeing Romeo and Juliet, I read the Burdett book of the play to my daughter which familiarized her with the story. And the home school association production I saw used Burdett’s version of The Tempest to work with for their play.

In Burdett’s Tempest, Shakespeare’s blank verse is converted into lines of rhyming couplets. This form of the text retains much of the poetic quality of the original and is easier for children to memorize. The text is then accompanied by student generated illustrations and short pieces of interpretation written by students themselves. Burdett’s books allows readers to literally see the process of children working through the play’s characters and plot through images and words they have come up with themselves. Indeed, as Burdett’s book states on the cover, Shakespeare Can Be Fun!

This week’s Poetry Friday host is Becky’s Book Reviews.

(Steve Hickey)

Stories come alive for us in many ways and children’s theatre is one of them.  When I was a child, there was very little in the way of theatre for kids.  That has changed; today there are a number of theatres that cater exclusively to children.  To its credit, even my small city of Winnipeg has its own theatre for children — Manitoba Theatre for Young People –  that has put on outstanding productions for children of various ages.

When I went to London this spring, I was intent on giving my children theatre experiences to remember.  Of course, there is no city like London to see live theatre, and the children’s theatre there did not disappoint.  In particular, my husband and I wanted our children to see work by Shakespeare and luckily for us, the Unicorn Theatre was staging Twelfth Night at the time of our visit.  Twelfth Night is one of Shakespeare’s more accessible plays for children.  I read a child-friendly version of the play to my daughter the night before our departure, and it was surprising what she remembered when she saw the production.  When the black-clad Olivia first appears onstage, strewing petals into the water, my daughter immediately piped up “She’s sad because her brother died.”

The Puppet Barge is a theatre on a canal boat moored in northwest London.  The theatre uses marionettes.  They had a production based on poems from Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic — A Child’s Garden of Verse.  Using a delightful combination of marionettes, shadow puppets, and even a puppet show-within-a-show of Punch and Judy, the poems came alive through the performance.

What struck me about theatre in London was its multicultural hue.  Shakespeare is acted by players of every race and color, and the marionettes displayed on the Puppet Barge came from all over the world.  After all, to quote from Hamlet, the play’s the thing! And ‘play’ is certainly something children know all about!  Is there some place in your city where your children can see live theatre?  Do tell!