The Merchant of Venice Connects Multiple Classes
During the Winter Trimester, Kimball Union’s Honors Composition & Literature students engaged in an intensive study of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. First students read each act for homework, and then reread and discussed in class. Once students were confident with the play, they began to delve into analysis of specific aspects. Working in conjunction with Ms. Clisura in our school’s Schiltkamp Library, each student wrote an essay, supported by secondary sources of literary scholarship. Students critiqued each other’s work, and continued to revise their pieces. Finally, students worked collaboratively on a reader’s theater script. This project required them to reduce the play to a 45 minute version by editing out more than half the lines, yet keeping the plot, characterization, and themes intact. Here’s an example of this refinement process:
The man that hath no music in himself,
Is fit for treasons, stategems, and spoils.
(V.i.82–86)
The class then joined together with the Digital Video Production classes, whose combined efforts resulted in a 45-minute Reader’s Theater of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. Using green screen in the Maker Space, they were able to lift themselves out of their classroom in Miller Bicentennial Hall into the city of Venice and the fictional estate at Belmont. Members of the video production class serve as videographers and technicians.
