Bard for Babes

Authors

  • Sujata Iyengar University of Georgia

Abstract

"Boot Camp Shakespeare," by Georgia Shakespeare, introduces children from the ages of four to eight years old not only to Shakespeare but also to the craft and mechanics of theater. An improvised ensemble piece, "Scary Field Trip," turned Iago's ostensible motive for revenge, his anger at being passed over for promotion, into the fury of a "nerdy" kid tricked by his "cool" classmate. Although "Scary Field Trip" did not engage directly with the racial plot of Shakespeare's play, its casting practices and the structure of the appropriation itself nonetheless did so.

Author Biography

Sujata Iyengar, University of Georgia

Sujata Iyengar, Associate Professor, teaches early modern British literature in the English Department of the University of Georgia. Her book, Shades of Difference: Mythologies of Skin Color in Early Modern England, came out from the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2005, and recent essays include "Color-blind Casting in Single-Sex Shakespeare" in Color-blind Shakespeare, edited by Ayanna Thompson (Routledge, 2006) and "Moorish Dancing in The Two Noble Kinsmen," forthcoming in MaRDiE. She is joint co-founder and co-editor (with Christy Desmet) of Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation.

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Published

2006-05-01

Issue

Section

Appropriations in Performance Reviews