By Tim Lanzensdörfer
A formative moment in my literary studies education, such as it is: a German class in high school, just before graduation, and we’re reading and discussing Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s Die Physiker. We’re on the appendix, where Dürrenmatt outlines a theory for the play, which may be a theory of drama as a whole.
Edited by Christopher Norris and featuring verse essays by Norris, Lucy Newlyn, Bill Hughes, and Tom Bredehoft.
Harriet Parks, a teacher at Woodhouse College in Barnet, wanted her students to write in the voice of one of the characters in The Tempest as a form of imaginative, critical exploration of the play. To spur them on, and give them a sense of what was possible and what could be learnt about the play in the process, she wrote a monologue of her own in the voice of Miranda who has now returned to Italy with her father and Ferdinand. She also wrote an accompanying commentary explaining her choices and asked her students to do the same. Her monologue and commentary, as well as the student work, are a wonderful example of how much the creative-critical has to offer…
Recent Comments