‘I’ll Teach you Differences’

Abstract

This chapter investigates questions of language, context, cross-cultural communication and collective learning through three examples from Fórum Shakespeare. For the past twenty years, the (almost) bi-annual project Fórum Shakespeare has brought young actors from Brazilian peripheries together with theatre makers and audiences to ask questions about multicultural, multilingual and potentially mutually beneficial ways of engaging with Shakespeare. The three case studies discussed in this chapter include: Paul Heritage’s work on Romeo and Juliet with a group of juvenile prisoners in Rio de Janeiro in 1999; Bridget Escolme’s workshops for young people in Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and Brasília in 2011, 2013 and 2014; and Catherine Silverstone’s lecture and workshop for general audiences in São Paulo in 2016. The Fórum – and each case study – insists on the plurality of Shakespeare. The chapter explores how professional and non-professional participants have disturbed the harmful assumptions and challenged the negative expectations that limit young people, while teaching pleasure, resilience and compassion through performance. In Fórum Shakespeare meaning has consistently been constructed through exchange, with participants’ embodied acts of translation introducing new understandings of how working inter-culturally with Shakespeare’s texts can allow different stories to be told.