Shakespeare and “Macbeth, the Musical” May 2010

This year the 5th-8th grade class studied Shakespeare. For our Winter Festival, they performed a condensed version of “A Midsummer’s Night Dream.” They changed the time to the Civil War, and the setting to Augusta, Georgia, built a colonial set and dressed in time period costumes. The hardest part was getting the southern accents down! They had to talk only with a southern drawl in the classroom for about two weeks before the performance, which added to the fun.

In April, we went to Washington DC and were fortunate to get seats at the Folger Theater to see “Hamlet” up close. We even had a fire alarm go off in the middle of the performance, so we all had to go outside. When we returned, the actors graciously and with great applause, placed themselves in the exact places they had been in, and then hit the reset button and continued on with their performance!

For our all school musical at the end of the year, Nancy (our director) rewrote Macbeth into a kid’s story, set right at Running River School and set it to music. Some of the songs were: Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody and We Are the Champions, and The Beatles – Hey Jude…just to name a few and let you know how creative our musicals can be. All the dialogue was in Shakespearian English and it was quite the production, with both Banquo and Macbeth giving long speeches about the value of friendship, challenge and humility.