Recently, a professional theater group visited our school and performed an abridged version of A Midsummer’s Night Dream for our upper school students. While the majority of the play’s dialogue stayed true to Shakespeare’s original writing, there were more than a few interjections of a non-Shakespearean “narrator” character who gave definitions of what were deemed to be Shakespeare’s trickier words or plot nuances. All of the characters wore modern, trendy clothes, and the set consisted of curtains painted to look like brick walls covered in graffiti. Keeping with the modern theme, the director made the decision to incorporate the use of iPhones for some of the characters to communicate through texts instead of having them speak face to face as originally scripted. Towards the end of the play, Lysander and Demetrius engaged in a lengthy dance-off, which primarily included dances that have gone viral on Tik-Tok.
While our students were attentive and courteous audience members, when discussing the performance afterwards, most of them were unimpressed.
“That narrator character was totally unnecessary,” said one 8th grade boy. “Do they think we are stupid and can’t understand Shakespeare?”
“Why didn’t they wear old-time outfits? Plus, graffiti is ugly. They don’t need to try to make Shakespeare modern to make him relatable,” said a 9th grade girl.
A 7th grade boy admonished them for their use of cell phones in the performance. “Talking to people in person is way better than texting them, especially when it’s important. No wonder there was so much miscommunication in that play. Also, don’t they know there’s no phones allowed in this school?”
I was happy to hear these types of responses from our students, and they reflected many of my thoughts about the play. As I had been watching the performance, I felt as though it was somewhat of a Trojan Horse myself. These performers entered our school cloaked in the credibility of Shakespeare, only for us to discover that their performance contained many aspects of the toxic popular culture against which we work daily to inoculate our students. But our students saw right through the gimmicks that cheapened Shakespeare’s beautiful writing, and for this I was very proud of them.
The students’ response to this play got me thinking about gimmicks in general, and how they seem to be increasingly used to destroy or degrade that which is true and beautiful. My experience with the play, and my students’ reactions to it, reminded me of a quote from Dostoevsky’s book Demons:
“You cannot imagine what sorrow and anger seize one’s whole soul when a great idea, which one has long and piously revered, is picked up by some bungler and dragged into the street, to more fools like themselves, and one suddenly meets it in the flea market, unrecognizable, dirty, askew, absurdly presented, without proportion, without harmony, a toy for stupid children.”
At our schools, we are fighting against great truths being dragged by “some bungler” into the street and stripped of its meaning and beauty. We are helping our students navigate which ideas are worth revering, and which ones are “dirty” and mere “toys for stupid children”. We are teaching them to recognize goodness and beauty when they see it, and not be taken in by a cheap gimmick or corrupted version of the truth. Ideally, our students will grow into people who can not only identify what is true, good, and beautiful, but choose to run towards it at full speed.
Luckily for us humans, the ideas that are worth our time have been well-documented over the course of our existence, and there are no gimmicks necessary to engage with them. In fact, once we know how to identify the true, the good, and the beautiful, gimmicks become obvious–just as they did for our students when watching the performance.
Our students’ ability to see through the gimmicks employed by the performers, however, did not develop naturally. While all humans yearn for true meaning, most of us have to be taught what it is and how to pursue it faithfully. The modern world encourages us to find our own meaning, and to invent our own purpose, but really our task is to learn how to discover and chase after that which is universally worthwhile. The reaction our students had to this performance helped me see that at our schools, we are on the right track to helping them navigate the complex world in which they live.
As educators, we know that the fruits of our labors are rarely manifestly observable, yet every once and a while there are glimmers on the surface of our students that show us that the lessons we are teaching them are indeed accumulating in their minds and hearts. In the daily grind of behavior management, lesson planning, grading, emails, and meetings (not to mention living that life we are supposed to have outside of school), it is easy to not notice these small signs of hope in our students–but an awareness and acknowledgement of them is crucial for the seeds we plant to grow. When students recognize something truly meaningful, this should be celebrated and discussed, just as the distractions and temptations that lead us away from truth, goodness, and beauty should be shunned or ignored.
The week after the professional theater troupe’s performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, our own upper school students put on a performance of Twelfth Night. The costumes were not modernized, the dialogue stayed true to Shakespeare’s writing, and there were no Tik-Tok dances or iPhones. It was truly beautiful, and quite the hit among the students, who were quick to sing the praises of our school’s performance of Shakespeare compared to the professional theater group.
“Finally! They didn’t talk to us like we were dumb or try to get us to like Shakespeare by dancing,” said an 8th grade girl. “Now THAT is how Shakespeare should be done!”
If we model for our students how to do the good, teach them what is true, and are joyous about what is beautiful, we will strike that universal chord of true meaning that is within them all. And the best part is, no gimmicks are needed.
The Classical Classroom 