Blame the nosebleeds on William Shakespeare
How do you teach high school students to truly appreciate the work of Shakespeare if he wrote it in old, fanciful English? When, even more importantly, their first language isn’t English?
We’ve had our own issues with the English playwright. Our most concrete memories of which would probably include having to dramatize one of his works in high school. I remember bagging 1st place in a dramatic monologue competition where we had to do a rendition of Shylock’s justification because I put on a fake English accent. Which, at pre-Harry Potter time, was not common at all, thank you very much. Besides that, everything else I know of Shakespeare is in Hollywood remakes: as in Baz Luhrman’s Romeo + Juliet, in Heath Ledger’s 10 things I Hate About You (Taming of the Shrew), or Amanda Bynes’ She’s the Man (Twelfth Night).
How would you expect anyway a country like the Philippines, with over 120 major languages, and each language with its own slang and dialect to take on the works of some Englishman who at his time, was considered a jologs writer? We would probably go past the first two stanzas with a wrinkle in our foreheads, before we slap our faces and say, “nosebleed,” obviously overwhelmed by the seemingly distant writing in a tongue that isn’t ours.
These are the issues that the Philippine Educational Theater Association’s (PETA) new play William, unfolds. And once again, this indie theater that purely grounds itself on the Philippine context strikes homerun, enough even for BBC News to take notice.
Students breakdown Shakespeare with hip-hop and rap. The rap musical focuses on the lives of our familiar high school stereotypes (yung maarte, yung jock na tanga, yung eager beaver na nakakainis) as they struggle to get along with William Shakespeare’s timeless literature. The students discover eventually that his poetry actually plays significant parts in their lives, and slowly they begin to appreciate the work of the Shakespeare.
The plot of Ron Capinding is spot on, original and perfect for any student who has experienced the same pains. Why do we need to study this? Who is the hell is he? In fact, when I’m watching the play, I realize most of the audiences are students, and they are entertained mostly because of the relatable characters and comedy. I took my high school friend Misha. Though we’re both passed high school drama, we had to whisper to each other name-dropping distant memories.
The writing is ingenious in the sense that he is able to mix more than three languages into one play, stringing in Bisaya, Tagalog and English, putting to point that a multilingual country like the Philippines battling with English literature is ironic and difficult, but that despite the technicality of linguistics, the power lies in the meaning of the stories. Shakespeare was a fantastic playwright because he could write stories that transcended time. I mean, did he ever imagine an Amanda Bynes version of his Viola? He might have been, you know, like, offended or something.
Though the rap was a playful idea, it was also difficult for some of the actors to twist their tongue in the rambling poetry. Case in point: rap is not easy just because you don’t sing.
William does everyone a favor though by battling our apprehensions about Shakespeare. Instead of purposefully shoving copies of Macbeth to students who will only mock and repeatedly giggle at the line “unsex me now!” Try having them watch William instead and maybe it will ease tension and fear of treading the Shakespearean waters.
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William is directed by Care Divas artistic director Maribel Legarda.
The show runs on September 16-18 and 23-25, at 10 a.m and 3 p.m. at the PETA Theater (5 Eymard Drive, New Manila, Quezon City). Tickets are P350 (regular) and P500 (VIP).
Contact the ticketing office at 725-6244, 410-0821 or 0917-5765400 for more information.
