Drama Teachers: Take back the classics

Episode 212: Drama Teachers: Take back the classics Julie Hartley wants you to take back the classics. Lose the idea that Shakespeare is high brow and just for people who only have a grasp of the language. Listen in to learn a practical and classroom driven approach to a classical text. Show Notes Julie Hartley website Centauri Arts Camp Drama Teacher Academy Episode Transcript Welcome to the Drama Teacher Podcast brought to you by Theatrefolk – the Drama Teacher Resource Company. I’m Lindsay Price. Hello! I hope you're well. Thanks for listening! This is Episode 212. You can find any links to this episode in the show notes which are at Theatrefolk.com/episode212. Today, we are talking the classics – the “classics” with quotation marks and fancy fonts. For example, classics, Shakespeare!’ Now, we’re not just talking Shakespeare, we’re not just talking the classics. We are specifically talking about taking back the classics. The word “classic” has such a connotation to it, right? It makes some people think of a piece that is beyond them. “Oh, it’s so uber important! Oh, it’s a classic!” Or the opposite. “It’s dusty and boring and completely irrelevant to the current times.” Our guest today wants you to trash both those notions. Shakespeare is current and relevant. Shakespeare should not be put on a pedestal. I love it! I love her approach, and I know you will, too! Let’s get to it. I’ll see you on the other side. LINDSAY: Hello everyone! I am here today, talking with Julie Hartley. Hello, Julie! JULIE: Hi! LINDSAY: First of all, could you tell everybody where in the world you are? JULIE: Physically, right now, I am in Toronto. I work generally all across Southern Ontario. LINDSAY: Very cool. Very cool. When this goes to air, it will be hopefully nice spring weather and maybe even summer weather. Right now, though, I think we’re both dealing with a little bit of winter fatigue. How was the ice storm where you are? JULIE: Hopefully, it’s clearing up today. It was pretty bad over the weekend, though. We’re definitely ready for spring here. LINDSAY: I know it, I know it. I know too that spring for you means something kind of exciting. We’re going to be talking about Shakespeare, and particularly how you can take classical text and really make them come alive in the classroom. Julie, you were many hats, and one of your great hats is an arts summer camp. Talk about that for just a second. JULIE: Yeah, sure! We’ve been doing this for the past 24 years. What we do is, every summer, we bring together up to 500 children and teenagers from all over the world. They come and join us at a big center down in the Niagara region, and we bring together arts professionals – mostly from all over Canada – who offer specialized courses for the teenagers. In theatre, we have everything from stage combat, clown, improvisation, comedy. We have programs that focus on scene study and other programs that focus on devised theatre. Pretty much, I guess, a child or a teenager could come to us every summer for about five to six years and never cover the same material twice. They have so many different focuses they can choose from, all of them to do with theatre. It’s a summer camp,