Training Shakespeare's Yes in the Era of No

Abstract

ABSTRACT What I explore in what follows is a theory of why my job has become more difficult in recent years – not impossible, and in some ways more rewarding because of new challenges, but simply more demanding. Why have I found myself with unprecedented vigilance upholding certain virtues of Shakespeare before a student cohort reflexively suspicious of those virtues? Why has there seemed to be, more than ever before, a barrier to the kinds of interpersonal generosity that Shakespeare’s plays demand of an actor? Why are my students so afraid to engage in the Shakespearean fundamental of investing in those with whom you may be in conflict? Why do my students, ever humane and ever eager to learn as always, instinctively say ‘no’ when Shakespeare’s characters always seem to say ‘yes’? At the core of this theory is my contention that the partisanship and rancour that have come to define present-day American political conflict risk forcing their toxic ethos even upon the performance of Shakespearean conflict. What to do, then, when my approach to performance is focused squarely on getting young citizen-actors to commit to a Shakespearean habit of calling-in rather than calling-out?