Tuesday, March 12, 2013
The robots are the least insane thing about this production of MacBeth
io9.com: Do you have a child you'd like to get interested in Shakespeare? Are you worried that the Bard's prose might be too indecipherable, or the plays too violent, or simply not interesting enough for today's kids with their iPads and Twitters and Biebers and Pokémons? Well, today is your lucky day, because the Robot Shakespeare Company has produced The Tragedy of MacBeth, a kid-friendly version of the play with some very unique characteristics
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2 comments:
This is a super cool concept, but the subtitles were a little distracting... its really nice to see people trying to bring classic theater into the 21st century, even if it is a computerized Shakepspearatron!
While this is definitely an interesting concept, and I appreciate the fact that people are trying to relate Shakespeare to a younger audience, I do not think this is necessarily the right way to do it. Yes, Shakespeare can be hard to understand for young people today, and it is definitely valid to try to "modernize" Shakespeare for theatrical purposes. I think this video succeeds in that it is trying to relate the story of Macbeth to a modern, 21st century audience. However, I think the subtitles are going a bit too far. If you are going to translate the text of Shakespeare so kids today can understand, it is teaching those kids absolutely nothing other than the actual story of Macbeth. Such a huge part of studying Shakespeare's works is learning, understanding, and adapting to the language he used in his plays. Also, I don't think I'd ever show young children this video, or a production of Macbeth for that matter. They'd have nightmares for weeks!
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