Budding public speakers and actors stepped up to showcase their hard-earned skills and gained insight from members of the Seoul Shakespeare Company last month.. For weeks on end, each grade practiced relentlessly to refine their projects for this very moment – whether it was a reenactment of one of the playwright’s very own works or a presentation of a historical figure’s speech.
The special guests – Jason Cutler, the managing director, and Joongwon Jeong, the artistic director of the agency – aimed to pack the day with as much action as possible. “One thing we really prefer to do is to keep things student-centered,” Jeong said. Out of the 75-minute block, they only spent 15-20 minutes lecturing to give students more opportunities.
The day started as eighth graders lit up the stage with impromptu performances to break the ice, and the two members of the company encouraged the class to face the true villain many actors face in a play: stage fright.
The brave volunteers impersonated an animal in a whimsical situation chosen by peers and guests. By providing the students an opportunity to improvise with only their imagination, Cutler allowed students to get comfortable with improvisation. “Even the students who didn’t really know what they were doing, they did it. If they ever have to do that again, it won’t be a big deal,” Cutler said.
In addition, both seventh and eighth graders embraced this unique opportunity to act out scenes of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Macbeth” respectively on Dec. 4. Joseph Yoon, who played Macduff in the action-filled duel that marked the finale of the play, said, “They suggested me to pose differently, talk in a different accent, and how to look more realistic. They [also] taught me ways to be more creative and how to improvise some words in case you forget a line. My partner and I learned a lot about the distance between us and the stance in which we have to stand.”
Although only a limited number of students performed for the coaches due to time constraints, both classes received equally valuable feedback from experienced actors who were well-acquainted with many of Shakespeare’s works.
High school students taking AP classes also got to join in on the fun. Cutler and Jeong shared advice on public speech, a huge part of English AP courses, most notably presentation-based classes like AP Seminar. Although AP Language and Composition doesn’t require students to give speeches of their own, Ms. Loutsch took the opportunity to do so in order to boost her students’ understanding of the various rhetorical techniques that speechmakers employ.
The true star of the show, however, was none other than Ms. Nagy herself, who first proposed that DIS invite Seoul Shakespeare Company after her visit to one of the team’s performances. “The thing that was really good about this was that they tailored to what our students where doing. It wasn’t just, ‘We’re going to come in and talk about drama in general.’ In order for that to happen, we said what we wanted and Ms. Nagy was the one who really worked with them and communicated so shout out to the efforts that she put in and hopefully in the future we can work with the company again,” Ms. Loutsch said.
Overall, all of the students, visitors, and teachers’ combined efforts contributed to the success of the event. Such events serve as a reminder of the importance of real-world expertise in the classroom, which helps bridge the gap between theory and practice. Both the students, faculty, and Seoul Shakespeare Company members hope to collaborate in the future, inspiring even more students to step into the spotlight and shine.
