Beyond The Classroom
“ While our Keystone students do not live in fear of violence at school ,” Ms . Keller explained , “ they do live with shoulders hunched over phones and laptops , disconnected from , and growing less sensitive to the world around them . We have taken this opportunity and used this play to examine the psychological shifts influenced by the pervasiveness of social media and easy access to weapons , in some countries . We have set the play in a high school because it is most relevant to our actors and their understanding of the world .”
John An , one of the main actors in the play and a grade 9 student , could not agree more : “ We have learned Shakespeare in drama class many times , but each time I found it complicated . But when I received the script of Macbeth , though in archaic English , I related to the setting , which helped me understand . I know the setting from my life , and I understood Shakespeare in a new way .”
Making Shakespeare relevant to today , and enabling students to reflect on their own spheres of social existence , were not
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