In the week from September 24 till 29, we welcomed 24 students from Sweden and Germany to the Shakespeare Centre. They are the participants of our three-year transnational learning project, CultureShake; last week saw the second of our three workshop weeks within the project, where the students meet to work on all aspects of our project.
As all of our participants are multilingual, and language (as well as cultural awareness) plays a major part in the project, the students had a full programme with the Trust: in addition to visits to the Birthplace and to New Place, they worked on an online dictionary of Shakespearian terms with the help of our collection of Shakespeare translations. Maddie and Victoria had also organised stack tours for them, so that they could go down into the archives to see where we house these translations and all of the other books, objects, and documents we look after.
The students focused their work during the week on The Tempest. After an introduction to the play, they jumped right into exploring the characters, their notion of home and dislocation, and some of Shakespeare’s best speeches from the play. Sarah Horner got them from zero to hero within less than eight hours of workshop time and led them to a wonderful ensemble performance of our snappy 20-minute version of the play in the Birthplace garden. Many thanks to all who attended the performance; the students were absolutely thrilled to have an audience.
Watch our photo slideshow to see some of highlights from the week.
More details about the project can be found here: www.cultureshake.eu.
