New Aspects of A Level English
24 March 2015
Organised by the English Association and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust
Designed for A Level students working on King Lear or The Tempest, this revision day will build upon and develop work that has been done in class, and will address:
- helping students appreciate the relation of their play to Shakespeare’s other work and to the theatre of his day;
- the influence upon texts of cultural, historical and other contexts;
- different critical interpretations and the importance of context;
- the contribution of directors, designers and performers to the theatrical experience;
- how characters and ideas are conveyed through theatrical presentation.
Programme
| 10.00 | Registration |
| 10.30 | Session 1 – Plenary: Shakespeare’s Tragedies, Histories and Comedies |
| 11.20 | Comfort break |
| 11.30 | Session 2 – Option: King Lear or The Tempest (1) |
| 12.30 | Lunch break (own arrangements) |
| 1.30 | Session 3 – Option: King Lear or The Tempest (2) |
| 2.30 | Comfort break |
| 2.40 | Session 4 – Plenary including Q & A – a chance for students to quiz lecturers on questions arising from the day’s sessions – or on any aspect of their Shakespeare studies. |
| 3.30 | End of day |
Fees
£20 per student (no charge for accompanying teachers)
Course Leaders
The two course leaders will be drawn from members of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s team of Shakespeare experts –
Dr Nick Walton is Shakespeare Courses Development Manager at The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, where he devises and delivers programmes of study for school and university students, as well as for members of the general public. As Executive Secretary to the International Shakespeare Association he helped organise the Eighth and Ninth World Shakespeare Congresses in Brisbane (2006) and Prague (2011) respectively. He regularly reviews Shakespearian productions and publications, and he has written introductory material for the Penguin editions of Timon of Athens and Love’s Labour’s Lost, as well as contributing a chapter on Glen Byam Shaw to the book Director’s Shakespeare, an entry in the forthcoming Cambridge World Shakespeare Encyclopaedia on Shakespeare Societies, and multiple chapters in Dorling Kindersley’s The Shakespeare Book (published 2015) Nick is co-author of The What on Earth Wallbook of Shakespeare published in 2014, a giant version of which can be viewed in the Birthplace garden. He has worked with the Actors’ Shakespeare Project (Boston USA) on two of their Shakespearian productions, and has been a guest speaker at the British Museum, Central School of Speech and Drama, The Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship, and the National Theatre. Nick was one of the presenters for the RSC’s Hamlet web resource produced by the BBC, and for their Massive Open Online Course on Much Ado About Nothing.
Amanda Jenkins lectures, and devises and delivers drama workshops, on Shakespeare and early modern drama for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s secondary and university education courses. Amanda worked for the Almeida theatre, while under the Artistic Direction of Jonathan Kent and Ian McDiarmid. She was a co-founder of the educational workshop company Brave New Shakespeare, and recently was part of the team that published The What on Earth Wallbook of Shakespeare. Amanda has delivered talks on Shakespeare’s language to groups including the Oxford Royale Academy and the English Speaking Union, as well as speaking to teacher’s groups and Shakespeare societies. She studied under and worked as a teaching and drama assistant to Professor Virginia Mason Vaughan, co-editor of The Tempest for Arden Shakespeare and co-author of Shakespeare’s Caliban: A Cultural History. Amanda’s research interests lie in reading magic, myth, gender and identity in the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. She has lectured on The Tempest for students and special interest groups in the UK and abroad.
