Group items tagged

Reading and watching William Shakespeare's plays shouldn't make you feel stupid. But the 400 years between when they were written and today have put up barriers of culture and language that make it hard to read or watch them clean. People (alive and dead) are always telling you what to think about these plays instead of just letting you engage them yourself.

This lesson uses video segments from Great Performances: The Little Mermaid from San Francisco Ballet to help students explore the role of the author in relation to his/her work. In the Introductory Activity, students discuss the structure of the original The Little Mermaid tale as they remember it. Students then read the original story and compare their memories to the original text. In the Learning Activity, students examine John Neumeier's artistic interpretation of the classic fairy-tale by looking at two video segments that feature the main characters of the ballet. Finally, for the Culminating Activity, students craft their own contemporary interpretation of a classic fairy-tale (e.g., Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty).

Staged Play Filmed by Jasmine Castillo