Your child will study Shakespeare’s plays in middle or high school. But well before then, you can – and should – enjoy the plays together with your child in live performance. Here are tips from two theater critics and a director.

 

by Barbara Alice MacRobie

“You need to take Charles to see St. Louis Shakespeare Company’s production of The Tempest,” urged my friend Harry Weber, theater critic emeritus of the Riverfront Times. I was startled. My son Charles had just turned 8, and though he loved shows by local children’s theater groups, I hadn’t thought about introducing him to Shakespeare yet.

Was I ever glad we decided to go to the show! It was a beautiful production, imaginatively staged and well acted. Charles was entranced by the magic and laughed at the comic characters, whom he called “the goons.” The Elizabethan language was no problem, because the unfolding story and the characters’ voices and actions made enough of its meaning clear even when words were obscure.The magician Prospero and island spirits in The Tempest, St. Louis Shakespeare

Our happy experience was typical of families who make it part of their child rearing style to see Shakespeare live on stage, says Donna Northcott, founder and artistic director of St. Louis Shakespeare. And the reason, she says, was that we made sure our child’s first Shakespearean experience took place in a theater—not in a book or a classroom.

“Shakespeare was meant to be performed live, not studied on the page,” Northcott says.

Live theater has a special magic, and Shakespeare “is the best there is,” says Harry Weber.

“The best teller of tales by means of action is William Shakespeare,” he says. “Why not take children to Shakespeare? Why deny that to a child?”

"It wouldn't occur to me not to take children to Shakespeare,” says Judith Newmark, theater critic of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and mother of two girls.

Not “too hard”

Parents may fear that Shakespeare is “too hard” for children. Newmark, Weber, and Northcott passionately disagree.

“To say that children cannot understand or appreciate any work of art is to sell them short,” says Weber. “Children are as interested in the lives and passions of others as anyone else.The noble Brutus in Julius Caesar, Georgia Shakespeare

“Certain passions are of course more attractive than others,” he adds. “I remember when I first read Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield as a boy. I was completely turned off during the romantic parts—but I was interested in the anger and the joy, and I was interested in David succeeding.

“Of course children understand Shakespeare. They understand it at their level—but that can be a very high level. To say that they wouldn’t get all the nuances…who does get all the nuances of Shakespeare?”

Donna Northcott couldn’t agree more. “Too often, people say, ‘Oh, they won’t understand.’ If it’s well directed and acted, they’ll get caught up in the excitement and the energy.”

St. Louis Shakespeare tailors school performances for children as young as kindergarten. “I’m always thrilled,” says Northcott, “at how intelligent their questions are and their obvious understanding of the characters and the motivations.”

Language no barrier

But what about that 400-year-old language? That’s where live performance is especially crucial, says Newmark.

“Seeing the play done live will crack the language open for you in a way that nothing else will,” Newmark says. “Even when I read Shakespeare, I read it aloud.”

Her comment is echoed by Kenneth Branagh, the star and director of film versions of Henry V, Hamlet, and Much Ado About Nothing. He recalls his experience in his forward to the book Shakespeare and Macbeth: the Story Behind the Play. When he studied The Merchant of Venice in class, he was unimpressed.

“The language was very unfamiliar and difficult, and I didn’t understand a word of it. All I knew was that Shakespeare was a world-famous English playwright, lived around 400 years ago, and was supposed to be brilliant. It wasn’t until I saw one of his plays performed by actors that I knew what my teachers meant.” At age 14, Branagh’s first live Shakespeare was Romeo and Juliet. “The human situations seemed so real and familiar that the language seemed absolutely natural.”

Pure enjoyment—or required work

By the time that children reach high school, Shakespeare is studied in both English and drama classes. The typical menu often features Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Hamlet, and The Tempest.

But no matter how dedicated the teacher is and how creative the teaching methods are, if a child’s first experience of Shakespeare is at school, Shakespeare is first being encountered as work—something the child has to do and will be graded on.

On the other hand, if a child comes to class already having enjoyed Shakespeare performed live, the schoolroom study can be a pathway to even deeper enjoyment, rather than what homeschooler Beverly S. Krueger calls “a once in a lifetime wrestling match.”

Sir John Falstaff and Prince Hal in The History of King Henry IV, Portland Actors EnsembleIs advance preparation necessary?

What should parents do to prepare their children for their first live performance of Shakespeare?

“What a person should do way in advance is figure out how to extend a child's attention periods,” says Weber. “If parents allow a child to have attention spans limited by the number of commercials in a half-hour show, they’re cheating the child out of one of the great things about being human, because you really can’t say all that much in 10 minutes. The child who can sit quietly for 45 or 50 minutes is ready for Shakespeare.”

“It depends on the child and the attention span,” concurs Northcott. “You’re talking about two and a half hours for a whole show. Just be prepared to take someone really young out to the lobby!”

Opinions vary on telling children the story in advance. Newmark finds it useful, while Weber protests that “preparing the child takes the fun out of it, out of what happens next. If she’s read a synopsis, that element is not there for her. It’s the production that matters. A good production does not need preparation.”

“I think you can split the difference,” says Northcott. “Give children a little bit of a framework, enough information so they know who the players are, but by all means let them be surprised by how the story turns out.”

Introducing children to Shakespeare is partly about trust, says Weber. “You need organizations you can trust to come up to a certain level of performance. You need people you trust whom you can talk to about the productions. And you need the child to trust the parent who says, ‘I like this, you might like it too.’”

Shakespeare in the summer

Summer is often an ideal time for a child’s first Shakespeare because in that season many cities boast summer Shakespeare festivals, often outdoors in a casual atmosphere, and sometimes for free.Delacorte Theater, New York

For instance, Shakespeare Festival St. Louis gives free performances every summer in the city’s Forest Park. The free performances of New York’s Shakespeare in the Park at the outdoor Delacorte Theater in Central Park have been one of the city’s most beloved traditions since 1954. In Atlanta, Georgia Shakespeare performs in a theater with an adjacent shaded picnic terrace. In Portland, Oregon, the Portland Actors Ensemble tours a Shakespearean play to at least six different city parks over a six-weekend run.

Videos?

But if you can’t get to a live performance, what about videos?

“I don't think video does harm to Shakespeare. The problem is that you can say, ‘Let's stop here and get popcorn,’ and talk to people,” says Weber. “Good theater manners must be different.

“It also seems to me that you’ve got to be careful—there are some trashy video adaptations out there.” He recommends that parents preview video versions of Shakespeare and then watch them together with their children.

“There is something about being in the theater that’s a shared experience,” says Northcott. “ It’s never going to be the same twice. Even good videos can’t quite capture it.

“We can’t do the special effects that films can,” she adds, “but it’s that magic of storytelling, something that humans have enjoyed and craved for ages—to hear a good story well told.”

“Shakespeare is ours,” says Judith Newmark. “I want kids to have Shakespeare in their future. That means putting Shakespeare in their present.”

 

­­­­­­A mother of two sons, Barbara Alice MacRobie is the feature editor of Parent USA City and a marketing /communications professional in St. Louis, Missouri.

• Lead photo: St. Louis Shakespeare in The Taming of the Shrew, Ben Ritchie as Lucentio and Katie Puglisi as Bianca, courtesy of St. Louis Shakespeare • St. Louis Shakespeare in The Tempest, Robert Mitchell as Prospero (left), courtesy of St. Louis Shakespeare • Georgia Shakespeare in Julius Caesar, Neal A. Ghant as Brutus, photo by Jennifer Hofstetter, 2009 • Portland Actors Ensemble in The History of King Henry IV, Matthew Pavik as Sir John Falstaff (left) and Butch Flowers as Prince Hal, photo by Annaliese Moyer, 2009, stagerightphoto.com • Delacorte Theater, photo courtesy of The Public Theater