THE CEA FORUM - Winter/Spring 2015 - A Reflection from the Classroom: Teaching Students to See from the Perspective of the Player

Oct 15, 2026

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A reflection on performance-based pedagogy in a Shakespeare classroom, arguing that acting helps both teachers and students learn to “see” through the player’s perspective while remaining aware of the audience. Through a Measure for Measure class anecdote, role-playing techniques reveal language, character, and audience dynamics, culminating in a student’s unexpected physical comedy. The essay frames this as theatre’s distinctive power to join reality and illusion.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages25

Reading Time39 min

AccessFree to download

A Reflection from the Classroom

Performance as Teaching and Learning

Classroom Role-Playing Anecdote (Measure for Measure)

Audience Awareness and Two-Layer Drama Response

THE CEA FORUM Winter/Spring 2015 A Reflection from the Classroom: Teaching Students to See from the Perspective of the Player Marina Favila James Madison University I began using performance to teach Shakespeare early in my career. I’m embarrassed to say I wasn’t looking to explore early modern staging practices, current theatrical productions, directors’multiple choices, or even dramatic pedagogical strategies.1 I was young, and I was afraid of boring my students, fearful my teaching performance wouldn’t be enough, or Shakespeare wouldn’t be enough, and so I thought I needed some diversion to keep my students mentally alert. You find this problem in young directors who fear losing their audience with any speech longer than ten lines and thus insert little bits of business to keep the audience’s attention. Despite more than two decades of performance pedagogy, that’s probably still the main argument against actors in the classroom: that it’s a bit, entertainment, not education. But what I found while experimenting with performance-based techniques was a way of educating myself—and my students in turn—a way of seeing as perhaps the player sees: first, asan actor, seeing through the eyes of the character, then as a performer, constantly aware of the audience. This dramatic approach seems particularly well suited to students. Many are at a point in their lives when a variety of options (roles, if you will) are open to them. For that reason, I’d like to begin my essay with a teaching anecdote, one about role-playing and students. My Shakespeare class was studying Measure for Measure. I had arranged for two theatre THE CEA FORUM Winter/Spring 2015 majors to perform the temptation scene, where Isabella, a young novice, pleads with Chief Justice Angelo to spare her brother’s life (a man imprisoned for fornication); and in the process of her chaste pleading, Isabella also arouses Angelo. When my Angelo’s car broke down on the way to class, I was left only with my Isabella. And that was fine, as she was a terrific actress, and so we proceeded to analyze Isabella’s speech. Tangey2 (my student) performed Isabella a variety of ways: first cold and indignant in her plea for mercy; then shy, but warming to her subject; then sexy, warming Angelo’s ‘subject.’Each time we reevaluated whether that Isabella could fit with other things we knew about her character. And even when it didn’t work (as, say, with the sexy Isabella) the performance still yielded something from the language, in this case, the hidden sexual innuendoes in Isabella’s speech that made Angelo’s response more understandable. Finally, one student, expressing her frustration at Isabella’s position, demanded: Couldn’t our actress play a stronger Isabella? One that was furious, spitting fire at the chief justice? Tangey said she’d be happy to try it, but she was getting tired of playing to a chair. Could she have a body on which to vent Isabella’s anger? Initially, no one would come forward. Then a student who always sat at the back volunteered: Michael, who was definitely smart, but who liked to style himself as the nononsense jock—what you see is what you get. He was willing to participate, but he wasn’t willing to act and he wasn’t going to let some little girl push him around. This was made obvious as the 6’ 4”Michael swaggered down the deeply-tiered classroom, spun the chair around so he could straddle it, and defiantly placed his forearms on the back of the chair. Tangey went after him with everything she had, but Michael refused to respond, refused, really, to play, to step out of being Michael, the student, and into Angelo, the character. Either due to her frustration as THE CEA FORUM Winter/Spring 2015 Isabella or, more likely, her frustration as an actress, Tangey, at the climactic point in the speech, reached over to Michael’s T-shirt, pinched one of two delicate areas on a man’s chest, twisted, and then pulled him up out of the chair. I conf

FAQs

How does the author use performance to teach Shakespeare?

The author uses performance-based techniques to let students see through a character’s perspective while also staying aware of the audience. Acting becomes a way to educate both the teacher and the students.

What classroom event illustrates the approach?

In a Measure for Measure lesson, two students performed Isabella’s temptation-related scene; when a contingency left only the Isabella role, students reshaped how the character could be played. A student’s reluctance later turned into comic acting that changed the scene for the class.

Why does the author say drama works differently from other art forms?

The essay emphasizes drama’s ability to dramatize what makes people unlike other creatures by binding reality and illusion as equal partners. It also highlights the audience’s pleasure in observing character and actor simultaneously.

Oct 15, 2026

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