On April 17, 2018, Clayton Stromberger, a director of Shakespearean plays from University of Texas at Austin delivered a lecture on “What We Can Learn by Playing Shakespeare” to students and teachers at the invitation of School of International Studies (SIS), Zhejiang University in the cafe of Building East 5. The lecture was hosted by Prof. Hao Tianhu, director of Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies of the SIS. More than twenty students and teachers, including Prof. Shen Hong and Dr. Ding Guang, attended the lecture.
Shakespeare’s works remain enduring for over 400 years and draw public attention with social communication and cultural development not simply because they have been constantly interpreted, played and adapted, but because their literary meaning has won young audience’s familiarity and affection. Thanks to stage performance, audience and readers of Shakespeare’s works around the world get an opportunity to reinterpret his classics. The academic value of this lecture lies in that it reminds us of the facts that Shakespeare, the world-famous cultural hero, is an actor and that the essence of his plays is performance; however this theatre genre rather than literary one is usually overlooked. Stromberger, who has directed and played many Shakespearean works such as Measure for Measure and Troilus and Cressida, took himself as an example to introduce how he got exposed to the plays of Shakespeare 30 years ago and how he gradually fell in love with it. In this process he benefited a lot, as he not only overcame his timidity and enjoyed playing with confidence, but also met some like-minded friends and started his career to guide young people to play Shakespeare.
The performance of Shakespeare’s works is the basis of readers’ in-depth participation. Through performance, generations of readers got close to Shakespeare’s minds as well as his drama world and had a new understanding of themselves. Stromberger invited the audience to play two games related to performance and role played two episodes of Shakespeare’s works, including The Merchant of Venice. Everyone took an active part and enjoyed very much. Finally, in interactive Q & A session with the host, Stromberger summarized the significance of playing Shakespeare, namely, we better understand Shakespeare through playing his works; we develop the spirit of teamwork as we cooperate with and trust each other; apart from the benefits in emotion, playing is also conducive to social development. For Stromberger, playing Shakespeare integrates game with work. For the young, their participation in the show must be an important stage in their life and they will have different interpretations of the same role, which links Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s works, others and society. He cited Ben Jonson’s famous comment on Shakespeare, “He does not belong to an era, but belongs to all centuries.”
Stromberger and audience spent an hour and a half together in a relaxing and lively atmosphere. The Q & A and discussion sessions sublimated performance from the level of practice to theory and performance transformed Shakespeare’s works from plain work in readers’ minds to three-dimensional living object created by teamwork. Their vivid performance brings endless new discoveries and integrates entertainment and enlightenment, which corresponds to the elaboration of literary functions of some great figures, including Horatius, a Roman poet and Sidney, an English Renaissance writer.
The main purpose of Mr. Stromberger’s visit to Zhejiang University is to instruct students in Shakespeare class to play Macbeth. On the morning of April 17, more than 10 students successfully played an episode of Macbeth under his guidance and had real-time interaction with American students of University of Texas at Austin via Internet. Prof. John Peter, a celebrated scholar is director of Shakespeare plays for American students.
Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies
(Written by Hao Tianhu and Zhou Lan; Photo by Wu Yarong and Zhou Lan)
