Review of Play the Knave

Abstract

Created by students and professors at the University of California, Davis, Play the Knave offers students a chance to use motion capture to find themselves acting out Shakespeare’s plays. In a classroom setting, students’ bodies engage in a kind of digital puppetry, while tools for script-writing enable them to explore the consequences of potential cuts and revisions. If the software’s “glitchiness” interferes with the fantasy of immersion imagined by many forms of Shakespeare remediation, it also enables careful thought about Shakespeare’s difficulty.