PTS 10/062: Wakey, Wakey …

I took you for granted for so long: I’m sorry …

 

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image:  Abel Guerrero

Being a Production Photographer has its moments – this is my favourite image from The Dream in Cambridge, 2012.

Ponytail Shakespeare read-through:  A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V.

One of the things about a project like this read-through it that it gives you a certain discipline.  In this case, although my timetable may be only notionally followed, it has forced me to read or re-read plays that I might not have, otherwise.  Occasionally (Love’s Labour’s Lost, I’m looking at YOU), my reservations have been fully justified. On other occasions, this new-found steel in my soul has been intensely rewarding.  I might not otherwise have read the Henry VI plays, for example.  Or, indeed, re-read The Dream in any hurry (believing I knew it ‘well enough’), and that would have been a shame …

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Classroom Posters #5: Richard III

This is the last of the five posters currently up in my room – but not the last Lego Shakespeare, you’ll either be pleased or dismayed to know …

Richard III.jpg

In some ways, this was the quickest and easiest image to take – because I had a very strong idea of what I wanted before I started shooting, and there was no need for ‘special effects’ such as smoke …

So there’s no story attached to this one?

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Classroom Posters #4: Romeo and Juliet

Here’s another in the series of classroom posters I’ve got up in my room …

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How was this one shot?  Any unseen secrets?

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Is Donald Trump Richard III reincarnated?

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I took this image of ‘Richard’ at the Cambridge Shakespeare Festival in 2013.

“I am unfit for state and majesty”

Why do we still study Shakespeare 400 years after his death?

Our year 12 stint on Richard III is now beginning to wane – we start Act 5 next week, and will essentially be done by the end of the Autumn Term on 16 December.  Then I’ll sadly take a break from teaching Shakespeare until after Easter, when I’ll be looking at Much Ado About Nothing (year 8), probably Hamlet or Julius Caesar (year 9), and Macbeth (year 10).  My only ‘early modern’ fix in the Spring term is Marlowe’s Edward II.  Happy Days.

As the year 12 course has unfolded, keeping pace with the final stages of the US elections, I’ve found it increasingly difficult to leave the next leader of the free world out of our discussions.  With one difference:  I grudgingly admire one of these larger-than-life characters, and have nothing but contempt for the other …

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Classroom Posters #3: Macbeth

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Macbeth feels like one of the more memorably visual plays … which makes choosing a quotation for a poster all the more difficult.

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Classroom Posters #2: Hamlet

hamletI’ve ignored this blog for too long.

Here’s a second classroom poster.  Now it’s up in my room I’ve had a few questions about it …

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Classroom Posters #1: Henry V

20160514_89375 HVMy classroom badly needs some decoration over the summer: picture very little on the walls apart from wax-like dribbles of blue and white-tack that have melted in the heat (and which look horribly like chewing gum) …

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