Stage Door News
Stage Door News
The Stratford Festival is pleased to release the second installment of its unparalleled education tool PerformancePlus, which this year presents Hamlet.
PerformancePlus, which was launched last year with King Lear, integrates Shakespeare’s text with an HD video of a live performance at the Stratford Festival, allowing for dynamic engagement with Shakespeare’s works in the classroom and during individual study.
“With PerformancePlus, the Festival offers students a unique way to study and engage with Shakespeare’s plays, as well as giving teachers an outstanding classroom tool,” says Artistic Director Antoni Cimolino. “PerformancePlus shows students that Shakespeare can be vibrantly alive in the very same media they use to navigate and explore the world around them.”
PerformancePlus offers an exceptional clarity of understanding by combining a world-class Stratford Festival performance with Shakespeare’s script, highlighting each piece of dialogue as it is delivered by the actor. Students can read and watch the play at the same time, easily pausing at any moment to explore additional content, including mouse-over definitions of words and expressions.
The site also offers scene selection, character descriptions, scene-by-scene plot outlines, thought-provoking essay questions and more – all of which can be easily and successfully navigated during individual or class study. Video enhancements include interviews with actors and directors offering insight into the play, its concepts, themes and character development.
PerformancePlus is an ideal primary tool for delivering the Grade 9 to 12 curriculum, and has met with extremely positive reaction from teachers, who have described it as innovative and comprehensive, informative and insightful.
PerformancePlus Hamlet features interviews with Antoni Cimolino, who directed the production; Jonathan Goad, who plays Hamlet; Geraint Wyn Davies, who plays Claudius and the Ghost; Seana McKenna, who plays Gertrude; Tim Campbell, who plays Horatio; and Tom Rooney, who plays Polonius.
This year, PerformancePlus has been expanded with a number of new features, including:
• Hamlet on Hamlet
• An extended interview with Jonathan Goad.
• Behind the Scenes
• A tour of the Festival’s backstage, led by Artistic Director Antoni Cimolino.
• From a Different Angle
• A video lesson plan examining Combat Choreography and Storytelling. It gives the student a variety of camera angles for the Act V, Scene ii fight. Students become the director and decide which shots they would use to tell the story.
• How To: Soliloquy Exercise and How To: Tapping into the Story
• These videos support the lesson plan “To Be or Not To Be … A Puzzling Question” (Act III, Scene i) by demonstrating the suggested activity to the teacher and student.
PerformancePlus is available on the Festival website, at: www.stratfordfestival.ca/PerformancePlus.
“PerformancePlus is one of the key components of Stratford Festival HD,” says Executive Director Anita Gaffney. “It is our goal to capture all of Shakespeare’s plays on film, creating the first North American collection of the complete works of Shakespeare, an unparalleled education resource.”
Stratford Festival HD is sponsored by Sun Life Financial as part of their Making the Arts More Accessible™ program. Support for PerformancePlus is generously provided by The John and Myrna Daniels Charitable Foundation. Support for Stratford Festival HD is generously provided by Laura Dinner & Richard Rooney, the Jenkins Family Foundation, the Henry White Kinnear Foundation, Ophelia & Mike Lazaridis, The Catherine and Maxwell Meighen Foundation, Sandra & Jim Pitblado, the Slaight Family Foundation, Robert & Jacqueline Sperandio, and an anonymous donor.
Support for Stratford Festival HD has also been provided by the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario
Photo: Jonathan Goad as Hamlet. ©2015 Don Dixon.
2017-04-04
Stratford: Stratford Festival releases a PerformancePlus study tool for "Hamlet"