Julius Caesar/Death of a Salesman

A return to xxx Road, the largest campus of the largest school in the largest school in the world.  But a different play this time, with a different group.  Neither of which boded well.  A younger age group, which might suggest less sophistication.  And to work on a play which I have loathed with a passion, almost from my very first experience of theatre (Stanborough School, Mr Heft, sheets for togas, all of that.)  And even more than I ha ted Macbeth – I’m a comedy man, really.

But on both counts, I could not have been more wrong.  The class was large, right up to my declared limit of thirty students, but they were switched on and attentive.  And if there is one scene in Julius Caesar that I do have a real interest in (because I remember a teacher from Enfield Grammar explaining it to us), it is the Brutus and Antony funeral speeches over the body of Caesar.  And that was the one we were working on.

A chat and a game to start, of course, then an improvisation based on what I reckoned could be the key aspect of the scene, a salesman’s pitch. I had thought of going for the political, Caesar as Trump (or vice versa), but actually my second thought was better.  All Indians are familiar with the techniques of the salesman, which are, of course, the tricks of the politician.  I did give them the option of speaking in Hindi, if that would help, but in fact all the ones we saw used English.  One person had to sell something to their partner.  I did suggest a chair, as that was available, but then opened it out to anything they wanted – why limit imagination?

When it came to showing their work, which normally would involve people looking away, shuffling in their chairs, etc, in fact more groups than we could see in the time were volunteering.  But time was against us, and I chose three, pretty much at random.  All of which were great, with clever switches.  And it is a mark of the class’s intelligence and perception that not only were they able to quote many of the salesman’s tricks – flattery, exaggeration, bribery – but also saw immediately how they applied to the scene.  Brutus was a salesman; the more successful one was Antony.  (As had Caesar been, only he was dead.)

This led straight to the translated text I had been feverishly writing the day before.  (I do seem to have established a pattern for these Shakespearean lessons.)  This was a longer, more complex scene, so did take a good deal more effort.  But basically the same idea: not an AI-driven transliteration of the text, but a modern version.  Which actually did not require all that much change; the plebeians comments were basically the same, while Antony’s verbosity did need cutting down to a manageable length.

The next task was to assign the “plebeian” lines around the class.  Shakespeare only had four plebeians (because, as I pointed out, he would only have had four spare actors) but they are meant to represent a crowd, so handing their lines out to the whole lot of them was actually more “real”.  And then we performed it, with Mohit playing Brutus, and me as Mark Antony (of course.)  And it was, though I say so myself, extremely successful, with all the life, energy, manipulation made obvious to all.  And when I delivered  the final couplet – “now let it work” it begins, or something of the sort, you could have heard a pin drop.

But then it was their turn.  In terms of preparing them for the eventual exam, this was not strictly necessary, but I wanted them to perform (I’m a drama teacher, not an English teacher.)  I put them into groups of about five, asked them to choose an extract to perform.  Which brought us to the end of the lesson, to be continued the following day.

Except it rained – school cancelled.  And then it was Independence Day.  And then the day after was the day after Independence Day.  And then it was Sunday.  So it was today that I finally returned to complete the workshop.  There were some tense moments, when they decided I wouldn’t mind if they rearranged the groups – when I did mind – but they had some time to rehearse, and then they showed what they had done.

They were all great, every one, each with different points to make: Antony split between various people, the use of eyes, whatever.  And one was wow.  Like, amazing.  All girls, I think.

They were ridiculously nice at the end, saying thank you, etc.  Which was most heart-warming.  But I had had a total blast as well.  Teaching is absolutely the most amazing experience at the moment, and I really don’t know why.