Shakespeare Shorties: Twelfth Night

By Diane Swanson

Shakespeare Shorties are for teachers who are long on ambition but short on time. These short, fifteen-minute scripts are a great way to expose middle grades to William Shakespeare's legendary stories, characters, and language in a format that is quick and easy to grasp.

Shakespeare Shorties can be used for formal performances or as a fun activity to get a class up and moving and students interacting with the text. Introducing Shakespeare with short, hilarious scripts allows important ground work for more in depth studies in years to come.

"Twelfth Night" is an excellent vehicle for teaching anti-bullying themes. Indeed, the Denver areas schools teamed up with their local Shakespeare organization in 2012 bringing "Twelfth Night into the schools and initiating dialogue, lessons, and skills to combat bullying.

Join shipwrecked Viola in "Twelfth Night" as she dresses like her twin brother to find work, only finding love in some very strange places! The usual cast of delightful characters stroll through Viola's adventure as one mistaken identity leads to another, havoc reigns supreme, and love in one form or another seeks new hearts in young and old alike. Ancient Illyria will never be the same and your students will never view Shakespeare as anything but a wonderful treasure happily found after Shakespeare Shorties come to the rescue.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Diane Swanson
• Release date: Sep 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301860777

Diane Swanson

Diane Swanson is an artist, writer, teacher, and director. As a Drama teacher in the schools for fourteen years and teaching over a thousand students, she has created a series of great performance and visual art projects to introduce the beloved Bard to children. She also teaches a Shakespeare film course for teachers and directors.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Shakespeare is for kids! They love the stories, humor, irony, quotes, and great characters. But as the school days get packed with new modern skills, the time to digest Shakespeare has become scarce. And if you’re like me, you refuse to stop teaching Shakespeare. Alas!

Thus, Shakespeare Shorties to the rescue. These scripts are designed to run 15-20 minutes long. In order to keep them short, modern language is used with a sprinkling of actual quotes or dialogue. Although written for fourth grade, younger and older students would enjoy the scripts as well.

You may add or update the modern jokes and references as you see fit. However, keep in mind that each line adds time to both rehearsals and performances, so be careful how much you deviate.

TWELFTH NIGHT WITH KIDS

Your students will adore Twelfth Night: the mistaken identities, the letter plot, sword fights…you name it. I used Bruce Colville’s book, Twelfth Night, to help tell the basic plot as the images are large and engaging. I also used Shakespeare: The Animated Tales, which has an