High school students live by the sword

Eric Leake

Friday, Feb. 25, 2005 | 8:55 a.m.

The roughly 80 senior English literature students will perform parts of "MacBeth" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" tonight at 6:30 p.m. in the Liberty High School Theater. Tickets are $5.

The scene at Liberty High School Thursday afternoon was of students brawling in the theater, charging one another with broadswords.

The students grimaced, laughed, and had more fun studying Shakespeare than they probably thought possible during the stage fighting session of a two-day workshop that culminates in a performance tonight.

Liberty High English Teacher Daphne Grabovoi watched from the audience and marveled.

"They will rise to the occasion, which is the most wonderful part," Grabovoi said. "They've learned a lot already."

She told of students who tried to escape the workshop the day before and were now asking for more lines. In another day they put on a play.

Grabovoi won a grant -- for the second time -- from the Levi Strauss Foundation through the Arts Council of Henderson for the workshop and is contributing some of her own money, too. Late last year a poet visited the class as part of the same grant.

Teachers Ted and Lisa Tibbetts of Mainely Shakespeare are conducting the workshop while on February break from school in Maine where Ted also acts in the summer.

Staging a play isn't the only way to teach Shakespeare, Grabovoi said, but is probably the best.

"When I see teachers, and I've done it before myself, just say to kids, everybody take a part and we're going to read it -- you just can't do that," Grabovoi said. "It kills the play, kills the kids and kills the teacher."

The challenge, she said, is making something written around 400 years ago come alive.

Enter the Tibbettses.

Ted Tibbetts took the stage Thursday and taught performance with a liveliness even the students in the back with folded arms could not ignore.

"Our approach to Shakespeare is to make it interactive, make it fun," he said after the session. "That's our trick, if you want to call it a trick."

Students are able to understand the characters MacBeth and Lady MacBeth when they have to act like them and say their words, the teachers said.

Shelbie Kawaiaea, a senior, said the workshop helped take some of the mystery out of Shakespeare.

"It answers a lot of questions and lets you know more about Shakespeare and what he did," she said. "I've learned a lot about Shakespeare."

In the morning the students practiced pronouncing and understanding Shakespearean English. They wrote their lines on small paper scrolls that they can use if memorization falters.

Seniors Andrew Borja and Mickey Kay both said the language was tough and that stage fighting was their favorite part.

"We're actually learning Shakespeare with hands-on exercises and to relate to different plays like 'MacBeth,' " Borja said.

Added Kay, "It's better than sitting in class."

At the end of the day the teachers sat with the students in a circle around the stage and talked about what they had done and still needed to do before tonight's performance.

Students said they were enjoying themselves, that the workshop was good and that Shakespeare was finally becoming real.

"I'm glad you're saying that because that's what it was meant to be," Ted Tibbetts said.